


Lady Stamford's Secret

by doctornerdington



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, Blackmail, Case Fic, Drug Use, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, False Identity, First Kiss, First Time, Grieving, Inspired by Novel, Lady Audley's Secret, M/M, Madness, Marriage, Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Freeform, Motherhood, Mystery, Remix, Romance, Slow Burn, The smut will come, Unrequited Love, Unresolved Sexual Tension, casefic, keep the faith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-01
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 15:36:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 120,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1715753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctornerdington/pseuds/doctornerdington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mystery surrounds John Watson when he returns to London after three years abroad. What has happened to his wife and child? What secret does the new Lady Stamford guard so fiercely? And will Sherlock Holmes be too distracted by his growing feelings for John to solve the mystery before it's too late?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Before the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> This is a posthumous collaboration with Mary Elizabeth Braddon; I've adapted her novel Lady Audley's Secret, and retained much of her original structure and language. ALL CREDIT TO HER. 
> 
> Chapter rating: all audiences (will change to explicit in later chapters).
> 
> Braddon's novel was originally published serially, as this adaptation is. Chapter updates every Sunday throughout the summer!

It lay down in a hollow, rich with fine old timber and luxuriant pastures; and you came upon it through an avenue of limes, bordered on either side by meadows, over the high hedges of which the cattle looked inquisitively at you as you passed, wondering, perhaps, what you wanted; for there was no thorough-fare, and unless you were going to the Court you had no business there at all. At the end of this avenue there was an old arch and a clock tower, and through this arch you walked straight into the gardens of Stamford Court.

The house faced the arch, and occupied three sides of a quadrangle. It was very old, and very irregular and rambling. The windows were uneven; some small, some large, some with heavy stone mullions and rich stained glass; others with frail lattices that rattled in every breeze; others so modern that they might have been added only yesterday. Great piles of chimneys rose up here and there behind the pointed gables, and seemed as if they were so broken down by age and long service that they must have fallen but for the straggling ivy which, crawling up the walls and trailing even over the roof, wound itself about them and supported them.

The broad outer moat was dry and grass-grown, and the laden trees of the orchard hung over it with gnarled, straggling branches that drew fantastical shadows upon the green slope. Within this moat there was the fish-pond—a sheet of water that extended the whole length of the garden and bordering which there was an avenue called the lime-tree walk; an avenue so shaded from the sun and sky, so screened from observation by the thick shelter of the over-arching trees that it seemed a chosen place for secret meetings or for stolen interviews; a place in which a conspiracy might have been planned, or a lover's vow registered with equal safety; and yet it was scarcely twenty paces from the house.

At the end of this dark arcade there was the shrubbery, where, half buried among the tangled branches and the neglected weeds, stood the rusty wheel of an old well. It had been of good service in its time, no doubt; but it had fallen into disuse now, and scarcely any one at Stamford Court knew whether the spring had dried up or not. But sheltered as was the solitude of this lime-tree walk, I doubt very much if it was ever put to any romantic uses. Often in the cool of the evening, the present master of the house Sir Michael Stamford would stroll up and down smoking his cigar, with his dogs at his heels, and his pretty young wife dawdling by his side; but in about ten minutes the baronet and his companion would grow tired of the rustling limes and the still water, hidden under the spreading leaves of the water-lilies, and the long green vista with the broken well at the end, and would stroll back to the drawing-room, where my lady played dreamy melodies by Beethoven and Mendelssohn till her husband fell asleep in his easy-chair.

Sir Michael was fifty-six years of age, and he had married a second wife three months after his fifty-fifth birthday. He was a big man, tall and stout, with a deep, sonorous voice and handsome black eyes. For seventeen years he had been a widower with an only child, a daughter, Molly Stamford, now eighteen, and by no means too well pleased at having a step-mother brought home to the Court; for Miss Molly had run father's house since her earliest childhood, and had carried the keys, and jingled them in the pockets of her silk aprons, and lost them in the shrubbery, and dropped them into the pond, and given all manner of trouble about them from the hour in which she entered her teens.

But Miss Molly's day was over; and now, when she asked anything of the housekeeper, the housekeeper would tell her that she would speak to my lady, or she would consult my lady, and if my lady pleased it should be done. So the baronet's daughter, who was an excellent horsewoman and a very clever naturalist, spent most of her time out of doors, riding about the green lanes, and sketching the plants, and flowers, and all manner of animal life that came in her way. She set her face with a firm determination against any intimacy between herself and the baronet's young wife; and amiable as that lady was, she found it quite impossible to overcome Miss Molly's prejudices and dislike; or to convince the spoilt girl that she had not done her a cruel injury by marrying Sir Michael Stamford.

The truth was that Lady Stamford had, in becoming the wife of Sir Michael, made one of those apparently advantageous matches which are apt to draw upon a woman the envy and hatred of her sex. She had come into the neighborhood as a governess in the family of a surgeon in the village near Stamford Court. No one knew anything of her, except that she came in answer to an advertisement which Mr. Dawson, the surgeon, had inserted in The Times. She came from London; and the only reference she gave was to a lady at a school at Brompton, where she had once been a teacher. But this reference was so satisfactory that none other was needed, and Miss Mary Morstan was received by the surgeon as the instructress of his daughters. Her accomplishments were so brilliant and numerous, that it seemed strange that she should have answered an advertisement offering such very moderate terms of remuneration as those named by Mr. Dawson; but Miss Morstan seemed perfectly well satisfied with her situation.

People who observed this, accounted for it by saying that it was a part of her amiable and gentle nature always to be light-hearted, happy and contented under any circumstances. For you see, Miss Mary Morstan was blessed with that magic power of fascination, by which a woman can charm with a word or intoxicate with a smile. Everyone loved, admired, and praised her. The boy who opened the five-barred gate that stood in her pathway, ran home to his mother to tell of her pretty looks, and the sweet voice in which she thanked him for the little service. The verger at the church, who ushered her into the surgeon's pew; the vicar, who saw the soft blue eyes uplifted to his face as he preached his simple sermon; the porter from the railway station, who brought her sometimes a letter or a parcel, and who never looked for reward from her; her employer; his visitors; her pupils; the servants; everybody, high and low, united in declaring that Mary Morstan was the sweetest girl that ever lived.

Perhaps it was the rumor of this which penetrated into the quiet chamber of Stamford Court; or, perhaps, it was the sight of her pretty face, looking over the surgeon's high pew every Sunday morning; however it was, it was certain that Sir Michael Stamford suddenly experienced a strong desire to be better acquainted with Mr. Dawson's governess. He had only to hint his wish to the worthy doctor for a little party to be got up, to which the vicar and his wife, and the baronet and his daughter, were invited.

That one quiet evening sealed Sir Michael's fate. He could no more resist the tender fascination of those soft and melting blue eyes; the graceful beauty of that slender throat and drooping head, with its wealth of showering flaxen curls; the low music of that gentle voice; the perfect harmony which pervaded every charm, and made all doubly charming in this woman; than he could resist his destiny! He had never loved before. What had been his love for his first wife but a poor, pitiful, smoldering spark, too dull to be extinguished, too feeble to burn? But this was love—this fever, this longing, this restless, uncertain, miserable hesitation; these cruel fears that his age was an insurmountable barrier to his happiness; this sick hatred of his old body; this frenzied wish to be young again, with glistening raven hair, and a slim waist, such as he had twenty years before. All these signs gave token of the truth, and told only too plainly that, at the sober age of fifty-five, Sir Michael Stamford had fallen ill of the terrible fever called love.

I do not think that, throughout his courtship, the baronet once calculated upon his wealth or his position as reasons for his success. If he ever remembered these things, he dismissed the thought of them with a shudder. It pained him too much to believe for a moment that any one so lovely and innocent could value herself against a splendid house or a good old title. No; there was nothing whatever in Miss Morstan’s manner that betrayed the shallow artifices employed by a woman who wishes to captivate a rich man.

One misty August evening, Sir Michael, sitting opposite to Mary Morstan, at a window in the surgeon's little drawing-room, took an opportunity while the family happened by some accident to be absent from the room, of speaking upon the subject nearest to his heart. He made the governess, in a few but solemn words, an offer of his hand. There was something almost touching in the manner and tone in which he spoke to her—half in deprecation, knowing that he could hardly expect to be the choice of a beautiful young girl, and praying rather that she would reject him, even though she broke his heart by doing so, than that she should accept his offer if she would not be happy with him.

Mary Morstan flushed scarlet to the roots of her fair hair; and then grew pale again, far paler than Sir Michael had ever seen her before. She leaned her elbows on the drawing-board before her, and clasping her hands over her face, seemed for some minutes to be thinking deeply. She wore a narrow black ribbon round her neck, with a locket, or a cross, or a miniature, perhaps, attached to it; but whatever the trinket was, she always kept it hidden under her dress.

"I think some people are born to be unlucky, Sir Michael," she said, by-and-by; "it would be a great deal too much good fortune for me to become Lady Stamford."

She said this with so much bitterness in her tone, that the man looked up at her with surprise.

Mary Morstan was not looking at Sir Michael, but straight out into the misty twilight and dim landscape far away beyond the little garden. The baronet tried to see her face, but her profile was turned to him, and he could not discover the expression of her eyes. If he could have done so, he would have seen a yearning gaze which seemed as if it would have pierced the far obscurity and looked away—away into another world.

"And this is your answer?"

She did not remove her gaze from the darkening country side, but for some moments was quite silent. Sir Michael took her tiny hands between his own, and spoke again: “Mary—Mary, tell me plainly. Do you dislike me?"

"Dislike you? No—no!"

"But is there anyone else whom you love?"

She laughed aloud at his question. "I do not love anyone in the world," she answered.

He was glad of her reply; and yet that and the strange laugh jarred upon his feelings. He was silent for some moments, and then said, with a kind of effort:

"Well, Mary, I will not ask too much of you. I dare say I am a romantic old fool; but if you do not dislike me, and if you do not love anyone else, I see no reason why we should not make a very happy couple. Is it a bargain, Mary?"

"Yes."

The baronet took her in his arms and kissed her once upon the forehead, then quietly bidding her good-night, he walked straight out of the house.

He walked straight out of the house, this foolish man, because there was some strong emotion at work in his breast—neither joy nor triumph, but something almost akin to disappointment—some stifled and unsatisfied longing which lay heavy and dull at his heart, as if he had carried a corpse in his bosom. He carried the corpse of that hope which had died at the sound of Mary's words. All the doubts and fears and timid aspirations were ended now. He must be contented, like other men of his age, to be married for his fortune and his position.

Mary Morstan went slowly up the stairs to her little room at the top of the house. She placed her dim candle on the chest of drawers, and seated herself on the edge of the white bed, still and white as the draperies hanging around her.

"No more dependence, no more tragedy, no more humiliations," she said; "every trace of the old life melted away—every clue to identity buried and forgotten—except these, except these."

She had never taken her left hand from the black ribbon at her throat. She drew it from her bosom, as she spoke, and looked at the object attached to it. It was neither a locket, a miniature, nor a cross; it was a ring wrapped in an oblong piece of paper—the paper partly written, partly printed, yellow with age, and crumpled with much folding.

* * * * *

He threw the end of his cigar into the water, and leaning his elbows upon the bulwarks, stared meditatively at the waves.

He was a young man of about thirty, with fair face bronzed by exposure to the sun; he had handsome eyes, with a grave smile in them that shone through the blond lashes even when his mouth was set, as it habitually was, in a determined line. He was compactly yet powerfully built; he wore a loose gray suit and a felt hat, placed precisely upon his sandy hair. His name was John Watson, and he was aft-cabin passenger on board the Compass Rose, en route from India to England.

There were very few passengers in the aft-cabin of the Rose. An elderly trader returning to his native country with his wife and daughters, after having made a fortune in the Hindoostan; a governess of three-and-thirty years of age, going home to marry a man to whom she had been engaged fifteen years; the sentimental daughter of a wealthy Indian merchant, invoiced to England to finish her education, and Watson, were the only first-class passengers on board.

And Watson was, quietly, the life and soul of the vessel; nobody knew who or what he was, or where he came from, but everybody liked him. He sat at the bottom of the dinner-table, and assisted the captain in doing the honors of the friendly meal. He opened the champagne bottles, and took wine with every one present. He was a capital hand at speculation and vingt-et-un, and all the merry games, which kept the little circle round the cabin-lamp so deep in innocent amusement, that a hurricane might have howled overhead without their hearing it.

But when the Rose came to be within a week's sail of England everybody noticed a change in him. He grew restless and fidgety; sometimes moody and thoughtful.

The sun was drooping down behind the waves as Watson lighted his cigar upon this August evening. Only six days more, the sailors had told him that afternoon, and they would see the English coast.

And how well he remembered his last days in England, three years ago; the beautiful young wife, and dearer still, infant girl, who were waiting for him to return with enough capital to provide for them all. He ached with the missing of them, and yet, what choice had there been? None at all, not after his wife had fairly broke down, and burst in to a storm of sobs and lamentations, telling him that he ought not to have married her if he could give her nothing but poverty and misery; and that he had done her a cruel wrong in making her his wife. By heaven! Her constant reproaches drove him almost mad. His desertion had been the only way to secure their futures, short of throwing himself into the sea and letting her make a better match. It had not been an easy path, not with the constant toil in the mines, the disappointment and despair, rheumatism, fever, starvation.

But in the end, he had conquered! He had done it for them; the one driving ambition of his life, to be worthy of his family. One blistering morning, just two months ago, with a suffocating rain wetting him to the skin, up to his neck in clay and mire, half-starved, enfeebled by fever, stiff with rheumatism, a monster nugget turned up under his spade, and he was in one minute the richest man in India. How he had cried, with that lump of gold in the bosom of his shirt. He traveled post-haste to the city, realized his price, which was worth upward of £20,000, and a fortnight afterward was on his way back to his wife and child.

He wondered now, uneasily, if he should have written to her sooner. He could not, not when everything had looked so black. And then when fortune came, it had been swift, and he thought to beat the mail ship home to England, in any case. What would she be doing right now? Tending the child, surely. Tucking her up to bed.

He fell into a reverie, and puffed meditatively at his cigar. The last ray of summer daylight had died out, and the pale light of the crescent moon only remained.

*****

The same August sun which had gone down behind the waste of waters glimmered redly upon the broad face of the old clock over that ivy-covered archway which leads into the gardens of Stamford Court.

As the clock over the archway struck eight, a door at the back of the house was softly opened, and a girl came out into the gardens. She was not, perhaps, straightforwardly pretty; instead she displayed a profound depth of beauty which hinted at a power and self-control not common in a girl of nineteen or twenty. Her jet-black hair hung nearly to her waist, and her olive complexion held a richness not achieved by girls fairer and more fashionable in their looks. Her figure was robust, and in spite of her humble dress, she had something of the grace and carriage of a gentlewoman. This was Jeannine Marks, who had been nursemaid in Mr. Dawson's family, and whom Lady Stamford had chosen for her maid after her marriage with Sir Michael.

Of course, this was a wonderful piece of good fortune for Jeannine, who found her wages trebled and her work lightened in the well-ordered household at the Court; and who was therefore quite as much the object of envy among her particular friends as my lady herself to higher circles. This suited Jeannine quite well; she had an ambitious nature and an independent heart, and had no wish to live out her youth as a nursemaid.

A man, who was sitting on the broken wood-work of the well, started as the lady's-maid came out of the dim shade of the limes and stood before him among the weeds and brushwood.

"Why, Jeannine," said the man, shutting a clasp-knife with which he had been stripping the bark from a blackthorn stake, "you came upon me so still and sudden, that I thought you was an evil spirit. I've come up to see you."

"I can see the well from my bedroom window, Charlie," Jeannine answered, pointing to an open lattice in one of the gables. "I saw you sitting here, and came down to have a chat; it's better talking out here than in the house, where there's always somebody listening."

This Charlie was a slender fox a man, about twenty-three years of age. His pale hair grew low upon his forehead, and his brows met over a pair of greenish gray eyes; his nose was comely and well-shaped, but the mouth was thin in form and animal in expression.

The girl seated herself lightly upon the wood-work at his side, and put one of her hands, which had grown soft in her new and easy service, about his neck.

"Are you glad to see me, Charlie?" she asked.

"Of course I'm glad, lass," he answered, opening his knife again, and scraping away at the hedge-stake.

They were distant cousins, and had been play fellows in childhood, and sweethearts in early youth. She bit her lip as her lover spoke, and looked away. He went on cutting and chopping at a rude handle he was fashioning to the stake, whistling softly to himself all the while, and not once looking at his cousin.

For some time they were silent, but by-and-by she said, with her face still turned away from her companion: "What a fine thing it is for Miss Morstan that was, to have more gowns than she can wear, and her chariot and four, and a husband that thinks there isn't one spot upon all the earth that's good enough for her to set her foot upon!"

"Ay, it is a fine thing, Jeannine, to have lots of money," answered Charlie, "and I hope you'll be warned by that, my lass, to save up your wages for when we are wed."

"Why, only three months ago she was in Dawson’s house – a servant like me!" continued the girl, as if she had not heard her cousin's speech. "She took wages and worked for them as hard, or harder, than I did. You should have seen her shabby clothes, Charlie—worn and patched, and darned and turned and twisted, yet always looking nice upon her, somehow. She gives me more as lady's-maid here than ever she got from Mr. Dawson then. Why, I've seen her come out of the parlor with a few sovereigns and a little silver in her hand, that master had just given her for her quarter's salary; and now look at her!"

"Never you mind her," said Charlie; "take care of yourself, Jeannine; that's all you've got to do. What should you say to a public-house for you and me, by-and-by, my girl? There's pots of money to be made out of a public-house. You can learn a great deal about people when they’re in their cups – a great deal that they’d prefer you not to know."

The girl still sat with her face averted from her lover, her hands hanging listlessly in her lap, and her dark, wide eyes fixed upon the last low streak of crimson dying out behind the trunks of the trees. This was less than she had wanted for herself.

"You should see the inside of the house, Charlie," she said; "it's a tumbledown looking place enough outside; but you should see my lady's rooms—all pictures and gilding, and great looking-glasses that stretch from the ceiling to the floor. Painted ceilings, too, that cost hundreds of pounds, the housekeeper told her, and all done for her."

"She's a lucky one," muttered Charlie, affecting indifference. "Is she at home to-night?"

"No; she has gone out with Sir Michael to a dinner party at the Beeches. They've seven or eight miles to drive, and they won't be back till after eleven."

"Then I'll tell you what, Jeannine, if the inside of the house is so mighty fine, I should like to have a look at it."

"You shall, then. Mrs. Turner, the housekeeper, knows you by sight, and she can't object to my showing you some of the best rooms."

It was almost dark when the cousins left the shrubbery and walked slowly to the house. The door by which they entered led into the servants' hall, on one side of which was the housekeeper's room. Jeannine stopped for a moment to ask the housekeeper if she might take her cousin through some of the rooms, and having received permission to do so, lighted a candle at the lamp in the hall, and beckoned to Charlie to follow her into the other part of the house.

The long, black oak corridors were dim in the ghostly twilight—the light carried by Jeannine looking only a poor speck in the broad passages through which the girl led her cousin. “It's a dull place, Jeannine," he said, as they emerged from a passage into the principal hall, which was not yet lighted; "yet I've heard tell of a murder that was done here in old times."

"There are murders enough in these times, as to that, Charlie," answered the girl, ascending the staircase, followed by the young man.

She led the way through a great drawing-room, rich in satin and ormolu, buhl and inlaid cabinets, bronzes, cameos, statuettes, and trinkets, that glistened in the dusky light; then through a morning room, hung with proof engravings of valuable pictures; through this into an ante-chamber, where she stopped, holding the light above her head.

The young man stared about him, open-mouthed and open-eyed.

"It's a rare fine place," he muttered.

"Look at the pictures on the walls," said Jeannine, glancing at the panels of the octagonal chamber, which were hung with Claudes and Poussins, Wouvermans and Cuyps. "I've heard that those alone are worth a fortune. This is the entrance to my lady's apartments, Miss Morstan that was." She lifted a heavy green cloth curtain which hung across a doorway, and led the astonished countryman into a fairy-like boudoir, and thence to a dressing-room, in which the open doors of a wardrobe and a heap of dresses flung about a sofa showed that it still remained exactly as its occupants had left it.

"I've got all these things to put away before my lady comes home, Charlie; you might sit down here while I do it, I shan't be long."

Her cousin looked around in perplexity at the splendor of the room, and after some deliberation selected the most substantial of the chairs, on the extreme edge of which he carefully seated himself.

"I wish I could show you the jewels, Charlie," said the girl; "but I can't, for she always keeps the keys herself; that's the case on the dressing-table there."

"What, that?" cried Charlie, staring at the massive walnut-wood and brass inlaid casket. "Why, that's big enough to hold every stitch of clothing I've got!"

"And it's as full as it can be of diamonds, rubies, pearls and emeralds," answered Jeannine, busy as she spoke in folding the rustling silk dresses, and laying them one by one upon the shelves of the wardrobe. As she was shaking out the flounces of the last, a jingling sound caught her ear, and she put her hand into the pocket.

"I never!" she exclaimed, "my lady has left her keys in her pocket for once; I can show you the jewelry, if you like, Charlie."

"Well, I may as well have a look at it, my girl," he said, rising from his chair and holding the light while his cousin unlocked the casket. He uttered a cry when he saw the ornaments glittering on white satin cushions. He wanted to handle the delicate jewels; to pull them about, and find out their mercantile value. Perhaps a pang of longing and envy shot through his heart as he thought how he would have liked to have taken one of them.

"Why, one of those diamond things would set us up in life, Jeannine,” he said, turning a bracelet over and over in his big red hands. He laid the bracelet back in its place with a reluctant sigh, and continued his examination of the casket.

"What's this?" he asked presently, pointing to a brass knob in the frame-work of the box.

He pushed it as he spoke, and a secret drawer, lined with purple velvet, flew out of the casket.

"Look ye here!" cried Charlie, pleased at his discovery.

Jeannine threw down the dress she had been folding, and went over to the toilette table.

"Why, I never saw this before," she said; "I wonder what there is in it?"

There was not much in it; neither gold nor gems; only a baby's little worsted shoe rolled up in a piece of paper, and a tiny lock of pale and silky yellow hair, evidently taken from a baby's head. Jeannine's eyes widened as she examined the little packet.

"So this is what my lady hides in the secret drawer," she muttered.

Her cousin’s lip curved into a curious smile. "I shall have my public house yet,” he whispered.

“Charlie Milverton,” Jeannine exclaimed, “you positively frighten me.”

*****

Sherlock Holmes was supposed to be a barrister. As a barrister was his name inscribed in the law-list; as a barrister he had chambers in Figtree Court, Temple; if these things can make a man a barrister, Sherlock Holmes decidedly was one. But he had never either had a brief, or tried to get a brief, or even wished to have a brief in all those five years, during which his name had been painted upon one of the doors in Figtree Court. He was a handsome and dizzyingly intelligent fellow of about seven-and-twenty. His sharply angular features and slender frame were balanced by an unruly mop of dark curls and a sensual mouth, along with pale, piercing eyes of striking effect. Although he was now without family, his long-departed and much-missed brother had left him £400 a year, and placed his education in the hands of the venerable Stamford family, the elders of which had advised him to increase by being called to the bar; and as he found it, after due consideration, more trouble to oppose the wishes of these friends than to take a set of chambers in the Temple, he adopted the latter course, and unblushingly called himself a barrister.

Sometimes, when the weather was very hot, and he had exhausted himself with the exertion of smoking his German pipe, and reading every scientific and botanical journal from England and the Continent (for he had a keen interest in the chemistry of biological processes, and spoke many European languages fluently), he would stroll into the Temple Gardens, and lying in some shady spot, pale and cool, with his shirt collar turned down and a blue silk handkerchief tied loosely about his neck, would discourse at length with grave benchers, and unravel their difficult cases through deductive reasoning alone. Holmes loved nothing and no one so much as a puzzle.

The old benchers laughed at him; but they all agreed that Holmes was a clever fellow, and always correct in his deductions; rather a curious fellow, too, with a fund of sly wit and quiet humor, under his sometimes listless, sometimes almost frantic manner. But for all that he was tolerated as an eccentric addition to the Temple, no man would ever claim Holmes as a friend. His standoffish manner indeed led many to take offence, and he never hesitated to tell the benchers exactly what he thought of their unimaginative and stagnant thinking. Indeed, Holmes always volubly asserted that he had no friends, and guarded his solitude jealously. To those occasional few whose interest in the man gained them admittance to what stood for Holmes’ confidence, he confessed that he did, in fact, have a friend: a single, noble friend, with whom he had lost touch. No more would he ever say on the matter.

Holmes always spent the hunting season at Stamford Court; not that he had any care for sport, but he was somewhat attached to his old guardian Sir Michael, and by no means despised by Sir Michael’s pretty, if somewhat impudent daughter, Miss Molly. It might have seemed to other men, that the partiality of a young lady who was sole heiress to a very fine estate, was rather well worth cultivating, but it did not so occur to Holmes. Molly was a very nice girl, he said, a clever girl, with no nonsense about her—a girl of a thousand; but this was the highest point to which enthusiasm could carry him. The idea of turning her girlish liking for him to some good account never entered his brain; women were simply not his area.

So that when, one fine spring morning, about two months before the time of which I am writing, the postman brought him the wedding cards of Sir Michael and Lady Stamford, together with a very indignant letter from Molly, setting forth how her father had just married a wax-dollish young person, no older than Molly herself, with flaxen ringlets, and a perpetual giggle; for I am sorry to say that Molly's animus caused her thus to describe that pretty musical laugh which had been so much admired in the new Lady Stamford—when, I say, these documents reached Holmes—they elicited neither vexation nor astonishment in the lymphatic nature of that gentleman. He read Molly's angry letter without so much as removing the amber mouth-piece of his German pipe from his lips. When he had finished the perusal of the epistle, which he read with his dark eyebrows elevated to the center of his forehead, he deliberately threw that and the wedding cards into the waste-paper basket, and putting down his pipe, considered the matter.

"I always said the old buffer would marry," he muttered, after about half an hour's reverie. “Molly and my lady, the stepmother, will go at it hammer and tongs. I hope nothing worse will come of it.” And with that, he put the topic from his mind.

Some weeks later, Holmes strolled out of the Temple on his way to the city. He had some inquiries to make in a legal question a colleague had presented him with that morning, and fancied he could resolve the case for the man with a brief investigation into the species of moss growing on the Thames steps by Westminster.

He had satisfactorily completed his inquiries, and was loitering at a street corner waiting for a chance hansom to convey him back to the Temple, when he was almost knocked down by a man of about his own age, who dashed headlong into the narrow alley.

"Be so good as to look where you’re going," Holmes remonstrated after him.

The stranger stopped suddenly, looked very hard at the speaker, and then gasped for breath.

"Holmes!" he cried, in a tone expressive of the most intense astonishment and joy; "I only returned to London after dark last night, and to think that I should meet you this morning!"

Holmes, struck speechless, could make no reply.

"What!" exclaimed the stranger, reproachfully. "You don’t mean to say that you’ve forgotten John Watson?"

 _“No I have not!"_ said Holmes, with an emphasis by no means usual to him; and then hooking his arm into that of his friend, he led him into a shady court. Though he would not let go of his arm, he was silent as they walked, striving to regain a measure of composure. Finally, with some of his old indifference, he managed, "and now Watson, I perceive that you have been abroad. Tell me all about it."

John Watson did tell him all about it – and there was much to tell, for although they had been close friends at school, John had been forced to abandon his dreams of a medical career when the Watson family fortune had run dry. Holmes had remained at his studies, while Watson had left to make his way in the world as best he could; life, in short, had taken them in opposite directions. Watson’s pride was such that regardless of the fond regard he ever held for his old friend, he could not see his way to contacting him again when he himself was in such reduced circumstances. John related the events of the previous years, of his marriage, his child, his desertion, and his adventures in India, pausing only to elaborate when Holmes requested further details – which was often. Finally, his narrative ended. Holmes was for starting off immediately for the Crown and Scepter, at Greenwich, or the Castle, at Richmond, where they could have a bit of dinner, and talk over those good old times when they were together at school. But Watson told his friend that before he went anywhere, before he shaved or broke his fast, or in any way refreshed himself, he must look to his family, his little daughter and wife. Holmes at once volunteered to accompany him on his errand.

“I thank you,” said Watson. “You were ever the truest friend. And I find myself filled with apprehension; I should appreciate your company.”

Just a few minutes later, and the reunited pair was dashing through the city in a fast hansom. Holmes’ astonishment and curiosity had given way to a strange sort of brooding. Watson, meanwhile, sat in silence, staring out the window.

Finally, he spoke. "I shall take a villa on the banks of the Thames, Holmes," he said, "for the wife and myself; and we'll have a yacht, Holmes, old boy, and you shall lie on the deck and smoke, and drink, and it shall be as if the last few years were but a horrid dream.” Holmes said nothing.

But when they arrived at the address of the Watson family home – really, nothing more than a tiny cottage in a dreary lane – they met with disappointment. The cottage stood empty; no door, even, upon its hinges. It had every appearance of having been abandoned many months ago. There was no indication as to the fates of its former occupants.

“Holmes,” Watson said lowly, “I don’t like this. We owed for the rent when I left, but she was taking in piece-work, and giving lessons. She should have managed. What can have happened?”

Holmes gave no answer, but his misgivings grew.

Nor were the neighbours any help. Watson’s face blanched to a deadly whiteness. "Watson," he said to the woman across the way; "perhaps you didn't hear the name distinctly—W, A, T, S, O, N. Think, please. She must have left word for me."

The woman shrugged her shoulders and turned back to her squalling babe. And although Watson canvassed every house on the street, and the next, with increasing desperation, he could not discover one person who had heard a word about Mrs. Watson and her little child.

At last, Holmes drew him aside. “Come, John. Let us sit together and reason this through before we take further action. Between us, we will make some plan.”

Watson silently allowed himself to be led to a nearby coffeehouse, where Holmes ordered him a strong draught, and cakes.

The young man drank his coffee in silence, and then, leaning his elbows on the table, covered his face with his hands. There was something in his manner which told Holmes that his disappointment, temporary it may appear, was in reality a very bitter one – they had known each other well in their youth, and many of his habits and mannerisms persisted. Holmes seated himself opposite to his friend, but did not attempt to address him.

By-and-by Watson looked up, and mechanically taking a greasy Times newspaper, many months old, from a heap on the table, stared vacantly at the page.

I cannot tell how long he sat blankly staring at one paragraph among the list of deaths, before his dazed brain took in its full meaning; but after considerable pause he pushed the newspaper over to Holmes, and with a face that had changed from its dark bronze to a sickly, chalky grayish white, and with an awful calmness in his manner, he pointed with his finger to a line which ran thus:

"On the 24th February, at Portsmouth, Maria Watson, aged 25; preceded by Helen Watson, aged 2 years."

Watson sat rigid, white and helpless, staring stupidly at the shocked face of his friend.

The suddenness of the blow had stunned him. In this strange and bewildered state of mind he began to wonder what had happened, and why it was that one line in the Times newspaper could have so horrible an effect upon him.

Then by degrees even this vague consciousness of his misfortune faded slowly out of his mind, succeeded by a painful consciousness of external things.

The hot August sunshine, the dusty window-panes and shabby-painted blinds, a file of fly-blown play-bills fastened to the wall, the black and empty fire-places, a bald-headed old man nodding over the Morning Advertizer, the slip-shod waiter folding a tumbled table-cloth, and Sherlock Holmes’ handsome face looking at him full of compassionate alarm—he knew that all these things took gigantic proportions, and then, one by one, melted into dark blots and swam before his eyes, He knew that there was a great noise, as of half a dozen furious steam-engines tearing and grinding in his ears, and he knew nothing more—except that somebody or something fell heavily to the ground.

He opened his eyes upon the dusky evening in a cool and shaded room, the silence only broken by the rumbling of wheels at a distance.

He looked about him wonderingly, but half indifferently. Every surface, it seemed was strewn with papers, books, botanical specimens and scientific equipment. His old friend, Sherlock Holmes, was seated by his side smoking. Watson was lying on a low iron bedstead opposite to an open window, in which there was a stand of flowers around which buzzed two or three lazy bees.

"You don't mind the pipe, do you, John?" his friend asked, quietly.

"No."

He lay for some time looking at the flowers and the bees.

Holmes knocked the ashes out of his pipe, laid the precious meerschaum tenderly upon the mantelpiece, and going into the next room, returned presently with a cup of strong tea.

"Take this, John," he said, as he placed the cup on a little table close to John's pillow; "it will do your head good."

The young man did not answer, but looked slowly round the room, and then at his friend's grave face.

"Sherlock," he said, "where are we?"

"In my chambers, in the Temple. You have no lodgings of your own, so you may as well stay with me,” Holmes said. “While you're in town, I mean," he added.

Watson passed his hand once or twice across his forehead, and then, in a hesitating manner, said, quietly: "That newspaper this morning, Sherlock; what was it?"

"Never mind just now, old boy; drink some tea."

"Yes, yes," sighed Watson impatiently, raising himself upon the bed, and staring about him with hollow eyes. "I remember now. I remember all about it. Helen! My Helen! And… my wife, my darling, my only…"

"John," said Holmes, laying his hand gently upon the young man's arm, "you must remember that the person whose name you saw in the paper may not be your wife. There may have been some other Maria Watsons."

"No, no!" he cried; "the age corresponds with hers, and the child! And they’ve disappeared from our home."

He shook off Holmes’ restraining hand, and rising from the bed, walked straight to the door.

"Where are you going?" exclaimed his friend.

"To Portsmouth, to see her grave."

And then Holmes, who had been called the most self-contained and unsympathetic of men, found himself called upon to act for another. He rose superior to himself, and equal to the occasion. "Not tonight, John, not tonight. I will go with you myself by the first train tomorrow."

Holmes led him back to the bed, and gently forced him to lie down again. Pulling out a small wooden drawer somewhat hidden by the ephemera on the corner desk, he removed a vial, and mixed a few drops into a cup of water. “Drink this,” he bid his friend, handing him the opiate. “It will calm you, and help you rest.”

“Good lord, Holmes! Wherever did you get this?” Watson demanded, sniffing at the glass.

“Ah. I have a small, personal pharmacopeia, which I keep for experimental purposes. As you know, I’m something of an amateur chemist. This dosage is not excessive. Please, John. It will help.”

Too overcome to object, Watson did as his friend requested.

And so, he fell into a heavy slumber, and dreamed that he went to Portsmouth, to find his wife alive and happy, but wrinkled, old, and gray, and to find his daughter grown into a young woman.

Early the next morning he was seated opposite to Sherlock Holmes in the first-class carriage of an express, whirling through the pretty open country.

They arrived at Portsmouth under the burning heat of the midday sun. As the two young men stepped down from the train, the porter stared at Watson's white face and shaking gait.

The young man looked at Holmes with a pitiful, bewildered expression.

"Had we not better take a handsome to the graveyard, John? It’s very warm for such a long walk" he said.

“Oh God! The graveyard! I – Yes. But I should prefer to walk.”

And so, arm in arm, the two men made their fearful pilgrimage, and when Watson tired and stumbled, Holmes was there, ever-faithful, to hold him up. Both were warm with perspiration by the time they reached the graveyard.

“Rest here, John,” Holmes said, depositing the man on a bench near the gate. “I shall find the keeper, and get directions.” With a squeeze of his shoulder, he was gone. Watson had not moved when he returned, accompanied by a small boy, but he had buried his face in his hands.

"When you are ready, John, the keeper’s boy will show you the way to – to the graves. I will await your return."

Watson raised his head, and held out his hand to Holmes, who took it warmly between his own. “My dearest friend. You have come thus far with me; please do me the favour of seeing this through. Come with me.”

Holmes bowed his head, and squeezed Watson’s hand gently. Presently, Watson rose. “Lead on, my boy.”

And then John Watson and his faithful friend walked to the quiet spot, where, beneath a mound of earth, lay that wife and sweet child of whose welcoming smiles John had dreamed so often in the years before.

Holmes left the young man by the side of the grave, and returning in about an hour, found that he had not once stirred. His wet eyes were trained on the simple inscription:

Sacred to the Memory of MARIA,  
THE BELOVED WIFE OF JOHN WATSON,  
Who departed this life  
February 24th, 18—  
And to the Memory of HELEN WATSON,  
Who preceded her mother by three weeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Sunday Summer Serial: thanks to redscudery for the brilliant idea!
> 
> Thursday Teasers posted on my Tumblr (http://doctornerdington.tumblr.com).
> 
> Feedback appreciated.
> 
> Next week: "After a Year."


	2. After a Year

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a posthumous collaboration with Mary Elizabeth Braddon; I've adapted her novel Lady Audley's Secret, and retained much of her original structure and language. ALL CREDIT TO HER.
> 
> Current rating: all audiences (will change to explicit in later chapters).
> 
> Braddon's novel was originally published serially, as this adaptation is. Chapter updates every Sunday throughout the summer!

John stood by his wife’s grave, without moving or speaking, for some hours. He would not, in all likelihood, have turned away at all, and would have fallen into another fit of unconsciousness, had Sherlock not been there to take his arm and guide him back towards the cemetery gate as afternoon faded into evening. The boy who had led them to the grave looked at them curiously as they made their slow retreat. 

“Did you know the lady, then?” he called after them.

John looked up for the first time since Holmes had torn him from his endless contemplation of the gravestone, and turned to the lad. “I? Know her? She was my wife. And… my daughter lies beside her. What do you know of them?” he asked urgently. 

“Very little sir,” the boy said, hesitantly. “No one knew her at all in these parts, and you are the first to ever visit her grave. We only know that the burial was paid for right prompt with money left by the lady herself, and that no mourners attended. We wondered at that, such a young lady to be so alone.” 

John closed his eyes, and would have fallen, had Sherlock not been there to steady him. “You need wonder no more, then” he said hoarsely. “I am her husband: the one who should have been here. I mourn her now, and the child, though I scarcely deserve to.” 

And then Sherlock pulled him away, and the two walked back toward the station, one enveloped in the silence of the grave, the other simply unsure how best to offer comfort. Together they boarded their train back to London.

John was quiet in the days and weeks that followed; so quiet, indeed, that Sherlock began to fear for his recovery. The barrister accepted him again into his home with open arms; he gave him the room with the flowers and the bees, and had a bed put up in his dressing-room for himself. Grief is so selfish that John did not know the sacrifices his friend made for his comfort. He only knew that for him the sun was darkened, and the business of life done.

The John Watson that Holmes had known at school had been amiable and level-headed, but had an inner strength that few observed, and fewer still matched. Holmes doubted any circumstance could truly destroy such a man, but still, his worry grew as the month wore on, and John remained much unchanged. He sat all day long smoking cigars, and staring at the flowers, which offered no peace, chafing for the time to pass that he might sleep, for a time, and forget. 

Two months after John’s fateful return to London, Sherlock Holmes came in one day, full of a great scheme. 

An acquaintance of his, another of those barristers whose last thought is of a brief, was going to St. Petersburg to spend the winter, and wanted Sherlock to accompany him. In truth, this acquaintance aspired to a greater level of intimacy with Sherlock than Sherlock himself would wish – a not unusual happenstance, for the man was very beautiful – but Sherlock proclaimed he would only go on condition that John went too. 

For a long time the young man resisted; but when he found that Sherlock was, in a quiet way, thoroughly determined upon not going without him, he gave in, and consented to join the party. What did it matter? he said. One place was the same to him as another; what did he care where? 

This was not a very cheerful way of looking at things, but Sherlock Holmes was quite satisfied with having won his consent. 

The three young men started under very favorable circumstances, carrying letters of introduction to the most influential inhabitants of the Russian capital. 

Before leaving England, Sherlock wrote to his friend Molly, telling her of his intended departure with his old friend John Watson, whom he had lately met for the first time after a lapse of years, and who had just lost his family. 

Molly's reply came by return post, and ran thus: 

"MY DEAR SHERLOCK—How cruel of you to run away to that horrid St. Petersburg before the hunting season! I have heard that people lose their noses in that disagreeable climate, and as yours is rather a long one, I should advise you to return before the very severe weather sets in. What sort of person is this Mr. Watson? If he is very agreeable you may bring him to the Court as soon as you return from your travels. Lady Stamford tells me to request you to secure her a set of sables. You are not to consider the price, but to be sure that they are the handsomest that can be obtained. Papa is perfectly absurd about his new wife, and she and I cannot get on together at all; not that she is, disagreeable to me, for, as far as that goes, she makes herself agreeable to every one; but she is so irretrievably childish and silly. 

"Believe me to be, my dear Sherlock. 

"Your affectionate, 

"MOLLY STAMFORD." 

* * * * *

The travelers returned from St. Petersburg in the spring, and as a matter of course, John again took up his quarters at his old friend's chambers. 

Once, while they were abroad, Holmes ventured to congratulate him upon his recovered spirits. He burst into a bitter laugh. 

"Do you know," he said, "that when some of our fellows were wounded in skirmishes in India, they came home, bringing bullets inside them. They did not talk of them, and they were stout and hearty, and looked as well, perhaps, as you or I; but every change in the weather, however slight, every variation of the atmosphere, however trifling, brought back the old agony of their wounds as sharp as ever they had felt it on the battle-field. I've had my wound, Sherlock; I carry the bullet still, and I shall carry it into my coffin." 

Sherlock silently reflected that the bullet of which John spoke was not quite what the man himself appeared to believe; he was, in fact, like a soldier who developed a limp after being shot in the shoulder. John, Sherlock thought, misapprehended the nature of his own wound: it was not grief for the loss of a wife who blamed him, or a child he barely knew, but a crushing and irrational belief in his own guilt in their destruction. Heaven knows what wasted agonies of remorse and self-reproach may not have racked John's honest heart, as he lay awake at nights thinking of the family he had abandoned in the pursuit of a fortune, which they never lived to share. John never spoke of his grief in anything but the most abstract of terms, however, and Sherlock hesitated to rouse his steely temper by referring to it himself. His mind was constantly turned, however, to schemes that might ameliorate it, for he knew John to be the best of men, a victim of circumstance only, and not folly or poor judgment. 

So the anniversary of that 30th of August, upon which John had seen the notice of his wife's death in the Times newspaper, came round for the first time, and the young man put off his black clothes and the shabby crape from his hat, and laid his mournful garments in a trunk in which he kept a packet of his wife's letters, her portrait, and a lock of hair which he had carried with him to India and back. Sherlock Holmes had never seen either the letters, the portrait, or the long tress of silky hair; nor, indeed, had John ever mentioned the name of his dead wife after that one day at Portsmouth. Holmes made note of the day, though, as he noticed everything connected with his friend.

"I shall write to Molly Stamford today, John," the young barrister said, upon this very 30th of August. "Do you know that the day after to-morrow is the 1st of September? I shall write and tell her that we will both run down to the Court for a week's shooting." 

"No, no, Sherlock; go by yourself; they don't want me, and I'd rather—" 

"Bury yourself in Figtree Court? No, John, you shall do nothing of the kind." 

"But I don't care for shooting." 

"And do you suppose I care for it?" smiled Sherlock. "You may believe me when I say that I don't know a partridge from a pigeon, and it might be the 1st of April, instead of the 1st of September, for aught I care. I never hurt a bird in my life, but I have hurt my own shoulder with the weight of my gun. I only go down to Essex to occasionally refresh my mind, to shake off one of my lethargies, or to seek out new flora samples for my work. Besides, this time I've another inducement, as I’m curious to see this fair-haired paragon—the new Lady Stamford. You'll go with me, John?" 

"Yes, if you really wish it." 

The quiet form his grief had taken after its first brief passion, left him as submissive as a child to the will of his friend; ready to go anywhere or do anything; never enjoying himself, or originating any enjoyment, but joining in the pleasures of others with a hopeless, uncomplaining, unobtrusive resignation peculiar to his straightforward nature. But the return of post brought a letter from Molly Stamford, to say that the two young men could not be received at the Court. 

"There are seventeen spare bed-rooms," wrote the young lady, in an indignant running hand, "but for all that, my dear Sherlock, you can't come; for my lady has taken it into her silly head that she is too ill to entertain visitors (there is no more the matter with her than there is with me), and she cannot have gentlemen (great, rough men, she says) in the house. Please apologize to your friend Mr. Watson, and tell him that papa expects to see you both in the hunting season." 

"My lady's airs and graces shan't keep us out of Essex for all that," said Sherlock, as he twisted the letter into a pipe-light for his big meerschaum. "I'll tell you what we'll do, John: there's a glorious inn at Stamford, and plenty of fishing in the neighborhood; we'll go there and have a week's sport. Fishing is much better than shooting; you've only to lie on a bank and stare at your line; I don't find that you often catch anything, but it's very conducive to contemplation." 

He held the twisted letter to the feeble spark of fire glimmering in the grate, as he spoke, and then changing his mind, deliberately unfolded it, and smoothed the crumpled paper with his hand. 

"Poor little Molly!" he said, thoughtfully; "it's rather hard to treat her letter so cavalierly—I'll keep it;" upon which Mr. Sherlock Holmes put the note back into its envelope, and afterward thrust it into a pigeon-hole in his office desk, marked important. Heaven knows what wonderful documents there were in this particular pigeon-hole, but I do not think it likely to have contained anything of great judicial value. If anyone could at that moment have told the young barrister that so simple a thing as his cousin's brief letter would one day come to be a link in that terrible chain of evidence afterward to be slowly forged in the first criminal case in which he was to be personally involved, perhaps Mr. Sherlock Holmes would have lifted his eyebrows a little higher than usual. 

So the two young men left London the next day, with one portmanteau and a rod and tackle between them, and reached the straggling, old-fashioned, fast-decaying village of Stamford, in time to order a good dinner at the Sun Inn. 

They loitered over the dinner-table in the private sitting-room at the inn. The windows were thrown wide open, and the fresh country air blew in upon them as they dined. The weather was lovely; the foliage of the woods touched here and there with faint gleams of the earliest tints of autumn; the yellow corn still standing in some of the fields, in others just falling under the shining sickle; while in the narrow lanes you met great wagons drawn by broad-chested cart-horses, carrying home the rich golden store. To anyone who has been, during the hot summer months, pent up in London, there is in the first taste of rustic life a kind of sensuous rapture scarcely to be described. John Watson felt this, and in this he experienced the nearest approach to enjoyment that he had known since his wife's death. 

The clock struck five as they finished dinner. 

"Put on your hat, John," said Sherlock Holmes; "they don't dine at the Court till seven; we shall have time to stroll down and see the old place and its inhabitants." 

The landlord, who had come into the room with a bottle of wine, looked up as the young man spoke. 

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Holmes," he said, "but if you want to see Sir Michael, you'll lose your time by going to the Court just now. He and my lady and Miss Molly have all gone to the races up at Chorley, and they won't be back till nigh upon eight o'clock, most likely. They must pass by here to go home." 

Under these circumstances of course it was no use going to the Court, so the two young men strolled through the village and looked at the old church, and then went and reconnoitered the streams in which they were to fish the next day. Holmes kept up a steady stream of conversation, providing amusing anecdotes from local history and interesting facts about the native flora and fauna; he had some thought of occupying his friend’s mind so completely that John might, for a brief period, forget his sorrow on this sad anniversary. His plan indeed met with some success, and John became more animated as the evening came on. By such means did they beguile the time until after seven o'clock. At about a quarter past that hour they returned to the inn, and seating themselves in the open window, lit their cigars and looked out at the peaceful prospect. 

After a time, Watson spoke. His voice was low and meditative; Holmes was uncertain whether John was even aware of his presence. “We hear every day of horrors occurring in the countryside. Brutal and treacherous murders; slow, protracted agonies from poisons administered by some kindred hand; sudden and violent deaths by cruel blows, inflicted with a stake cut from some spreading oak, whose every shadow promised peace.” 

Holmes paused, unsure of how to respond. “It is true,” he acknowledged at last. “No species of crime has ever been committed in the worst rookeries of Seven Dials that has not been also done in the face of that rustic calm which still, in spite of all, we look on with a tender, half-mournful yearning, and associate with peace.” 

“I shall never again see peace,” said John. 

Sherlock hesitated, then reached over and grasped his friend’s shoulder. “I never have,” he said. John leaned slightly into the warm comfort of Sherlock’s arm, and they sat together in silence.

In the growing dusk, gigs and chaises, dog-carts and clumsy farmers' phaetons, began to rattle through the village street, and under the windows of the Sun Inn; in deeper dusk still, an open carriage and four drew suddenly up beneath the rocking sign-post. 

It was Sir Michael Stamford's barouche which came to so sudden a stop before the little inn. The harness of one of the leaders had become out of order, and the foremost postillion dismounted to set it right. 

"Why, it's the man himself," exclaimed Sherlock Holmes, as the carriage stopped. 

"You must run down and speak to him," his friend replied.

Holmes sighed reluctantly – for what reason, John could not tell – but did as he suggested.

John lit another cigar, and, sheltered by the window-curtains, looked out at the little party. Molly sat with her back to the horses, and he could perceive, even in the dusk, that she was a handsome brunette; but Lady Stamford was seated on the side of the carriage furthest from the inn, and he could see nothing of the fair-haired paragon of whom he had heard so much. 

"Sherlock!" exclaimed Sir Michael, as he emerged from the inn, "this is a surprise!" 

"I have not come to intrude upon you at the Court," said the young man, as the baronet shook him by the hand in his own hearty fashion. "Essex is my native county, you know, and about this time of year I generally have a touch of homesickness; so John and I have come down to the inn for two or three day's fishing." 

"John—John who?" 

"John Watson." 

"What, has he come?" cried Molly. "I'm so glad; for I'm dying to see this handsome young widower." 

"Are you, Molly?" said Sherlock, "Then egad, I'll run and fetch him, and introduce you to him at once." 

Now, so complete was the dominion which Lady Stamford had obtained over her devoted husband, that it was very rarely that the baronet's eyes were long removed from his wife's pretty face. When Sherlock, therefore, was about to re-enter the inn, it needed but the faintest elevation of Mary's eyebrows, with a charming expression of weariness and demurral, to make her husband aware that she did not want to be bored by an introduction to Mr. John Watson. 

"Never mind tonight, Sherlock," he said. "My wife is a little tired after our long day's pleasure. Bring your friend to dinner to-morrow, and then he and Molly can make each other's acquaintance. Come round and speak to Lady Stamford, and then we'll drive home." 

My lady was so terribly fatigued that she could only smile sweetly, and hold out a tiny gloved hand. 

"You will come and dine with us to-morrow, and bring your interesting friend?" she said, in a low and tired voice. She had been the chief attraction of the race-course, and was wearied out by the exertion of fascinating half the county. 

"It's a wonder she didn't treat you to her never-ending laugh," whispered Molly, as she leaned over the carriage-door to bid Sherlock good-night; "but I dare say she reserves that for your delectation to-morrow. I suppose you are fascinated as well as everybody else?" added the young lady, rather snappishly. 

"She is beautiful, certainly," murmured Sherlock. 

"Oh, of course!” Molly scoffed. “She is the first woman of whom I ever heard you say a civil word, Sherlock Holmes. I'm sorry to find you can only admire wax dolls." 

The man made no reply.

"As to his ever falling in love," thought the young lady, "the idea is preposterous. If all the divinities on earth were ranged before him, waiting for his sultanship to throw the handkerchief, he would only lift his eyebrows to the middle of his forehead, and tell them to scramble for it." 

The carriage drove off, and Sherlock returned to his friend. "She's the prettiest little creature you ever saw in your life, John," he smirked. "Such blue eyes, such ringlets, such a ravishing smile, such a fairy-like bonnet—all of a-tremble with heart's-ease and dewy spangles, shining out of a cloud of gauze. John Watson, I feel like the hero of a French novel: I am falling in love!” 

Although this was intended as nothing more than a sarcastic harangue, John did not smile. The widower only sighed and puffed his cigar fiercely out of the open window. 

* * * * *

Lady Stamford was so exhausted when she reached home, that she excused herself from the dinner-table, and retired at once to her dressing-room, attended by her maid, Jeannine Marks. 

She was a little capricious in her conduct to this maid—sometimes very confidential and affectionate, sometimes rather reserved; but she was a liberal mistress, and the girl had every reason to be satisfied with her situation. 

This evening, in spite of her fatigue, she was in extremely high spirits, and gave an animated account of the races, and the company present at them. 

"I am tired to death, though, Jeannine," she said, by-and-by. "I am afraid I must look a perfect fright, after a day in the hot sun." 

There were lighted candles on each side of the glass before which Lady Stamford was standing unfastening her dress. She looked full at her maid as she spoke, her blue eyes clear and bright, and the rosy childish lips puckered into an arch smile. 

"You are a little pale, my lady," answered the girl, "but you look as pretty as ever."

“You’re a sweet girl. Come and help me with my gown.” 

Jeannine stepped forward, between my lady and her mirror, and continued unlacing the complicated closures on the front of her delicate silk gown. Lady Stamford raised her arms, and Jeannine lifted the gown up and over her head, leaving the lady shivering in just her thin cotton shift.

Jeannine arranged the gown in its closet, then turned back to Lady Stamford. Impulsively, and in an echo of the intimacy they had shared in their shared servant days, she raised her hands to my lady’s pale arms, chafing them until a little blood and warmth returned and the shivering subsided. 

And then, my lady made a strange little sigh – Jeannine hardly knew what it was – and took Jeannine’s dark hand in her own tiny pale one, and drew it to her breast. 

“Do you know, Jeannine, some people say that you are a truer beauty than I?” 

"I have heard them say so, my lady," said the girl, quietly, "but they must be very stupid to say it.” 

"Not at all, Jeannine," said the lady, clutching her hand harder to her breast; "Your features are lovely; your hair luxuriant, and your figure eminently desirable. I have noticed it myself. We are quite opposite: you are warm and dark where I am cold and pale. It is merely a question of taste as to which is preferable. Myself, I prefer … both together." 

And then Jeannine became aware that my lady was stroking her hand as she rested it on her breast. Gently, she thrust her other hand into Jeannine’s dark hair, gathering it in a loose mess at her nape, and pulling her so close that the girl could feel her warm breath on her cheek. 

"Jeannine Marks," Mary murmured, "I want you to do me a favor." 

"Yes, my lady." 

The caressing hand in her hair twisted into a fist, holding her fast. "I want you to go to London by the first train to-morrow morning to execute a little commission for me. You may take a day's holiday afterward, as I know you have friends in town; and I shall give you a five-pound note if you do what I want, and keep your own counsel about it." 

"Yes, my lady." 

"See that that door is securely shut, and come and sit on this stool at my feet," my lady said, releasing her. 

The girl obeyed. Lady Stamford smoothed her maid's disarranged hair with her pale, bejeweled hand as she reflected for a few moments. 

"And now listen, Jeannine. What I want you to do is very simple.”

It was so simple that it was told in five minutes, and then Lady Stamford retired into her bed-room, and curled herself up cozily under the eider-down quilt. She was a chilly creature, and loved to bury herself in soft wrappings of satin and fur. 

"Kiss me, Jeannine," she said, as the girl pulled the curtains about her. Jeannine bent forward and brushed her cheek with her lips; but my lady wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her in again, kissing her harder and longer, so that the maid’s cheeks warmed and her breath came quicker. 

"I hear Sir Michael's step in the anteroom,” Lady Stamford said, pulling back at last; “you will meet him as you go out, and you may as well tell him that you are going up by the first train to-morrow morning to get my dress from Madam Frederick for the dinner at Morton Abbey." 

* * * * *

It was late the next morning when Lady Stamford went down to breakfast—past ten o'clock. While she was sipping her coffee a servant brought her a sealed packet, and a book for her to sign. 

"A telegraphic message!" she cried; for the convenient word telegram had not yet been invented. "What can be the matter?" 

She looked up at her husband with wide-open, terrified eyes, and seemed half afraid to break the seal. The envelope was addressed to Miss Mary Morstan, at Mr. Dawson's, and had been sent on from the village. 

"Read it, my darling," he said, "and do not be alarmed; it may be nothing of any importance." 

It came from a Mrs. Vincent, the schoolmistress with whom she had lived before entering Mr. Dawson's family. The lady was dangerously ill, and implored her old pupil to go and see her. 

"Poor soul! she always meant to leave me her money," said Mary, with a mournful smile. "She has never heard of the change in my fortunes. Dear Sir Michael, I must go to her." 

"To be sure you must, dearest. If she was kind to my poor girl in her adversity, she has a claim upon her prosperity that shall never be forgotten. Put on your bonnet, Mary; we shall be in time to catch the express." 

"You will go with me?" 

"Of course, my darling. Do you suppose I would let you go alone?" 

"I was sure you would go with me," she smiled. 

"Does your friend send any address?" 

"No; but she always lived at Crescent Villa, West Brompton; and no doubt she lives there still." 

There was only time for Lady Stamford to hurry on her bonnet and shawl before she heard the carriage drive round to the door, and Sir Michael calling to her at the foot of the staircase. 

* * * * *

So the dinner at Stamford Court was postponed, and Miss Molly had to wait still longer for an introduction to the handsome young widower, Mr. John Watson. 

I am afraid, if the real truth is to be told, there was, perhaps, something of affectation in the anxiety this young lady expressed to make John's acquaintance; but if poor Molly for a moment calculated upon arousing any latent spark of jealousy lurking in Holmes's breast by this exhibition of interest, she was not so well acquainted with Sherlock Holmes's disposition as she might have been. 

It was not the least use to ride about the lanes around Stamford during those three days which the two young men spent in Essex; it was wasted trouble to wear that pretty cavalier hat and plume, and to be always, by the most singular of chances, meeting Sherlock and his friend. The brown locks, the red and pouting lips, the nose inclined to be retrousse, the dark complexion, with its bright crimson flush, always ready to glance up like a signal light in a dusky sky, when she came suddenly upon her apathetic friend—all this was thrown away upon the dull eyes of Sherlock Holmes, and she might as well have taken her rest in the cool drawing-room at the Court, instead of working her pretty mare to death under the hot September sun. 

Now fishing, except to the devoted disciple of Izaak Walton, is not the most lively of occupations; therefore, it is scarcely, perhaps, to be wondered that on the day after Lady Stamford's departure, the two young men (one of whom was disabled by that heart wound which he bore so quietly, from really taking pleasure in anything, and the other of whom looked upon almost all leisure as a negative kind of trouble) began to grow weary of the shade of the willows overhanging the winding streams about Stamford. 

"Figtree Court is tiresome in the long vacation," said Sherlock, reflectively: "but I think, upon the whole, it's better than this; at any rate, it's near a tobacconist's," he added, puffing resignedly at an execrable cigar procured from the landlord of the Sun Inn. 

John Watson, who had only consented to the Essex expedition in passive submission to his friend, was by no means inclined to object to their immediate return to London. 

They met Molly Stamford on her mare about half an hour after they had come to the determination of leaving Essex early the next morning. The young lady was very much surprised and disappointed at hearing their determination, and for that very reason pretended to take the matter with supreme indifference. 

"You are very soon tired of Stamford, Sherlock," she said, carelessly; "but of course you have no friends here, except your relations at the Court; while in London, no doubt, you have the most delightful society and—" 

"I get good tobacco," murmured Sherlock, interrupting her. "Stamford is the dearest old place, but when a man has to smoke dried cabbage leaves, you know, Molly—" 

"Then you are really going to-morrow morning?" 

"Positively—by the express train that leaves at 10.50." 

"Then Lady Stamford will lose an introduction to Mr. Watson, and Mr. Watson will lose the chance of seeing the prettiest woman in Essex." 

"Really—" stammered John. 

"The prettiest woman in Essex would have a poor chance of getting much admiration out of my friend, John Watson," said Sherlock. 

"I am going to write to my step-mother by to-night's post," said Molly. "She asked me particularly in her letter how long you were going to stop, and whether there was any chance of her being back in time to receive you." 

Miss Stamford took a letter from the pocket of her riding-jacket as she spoke—a pretty, fairy-like note, written on shining paper of a peculiar creamy hue. 

"She says in her postcript, 'Be sure you answer my question about Mr. Holmes and his friend, you volatile, forgetful Molly!'" 

But absent-minded and gloomy John Watson had strolled away along the margin of the ditch, and stood striking the bulrushes with his cane, half a dozen paces away from Sherlock and Molly. 

"Nevermind," said the young lady, impatiently; "Let me go, then; it's past eight, and I must answer the letter by to-night's post. Goodbye, Sherlock—goodbye, Mr. Watson. A pleasant journey to town." 

The chestnut mare cantered briskly through the lane, and Miss Stamford was out of sight before those two big, bright tears that stood in her eyes for one moment, before her pride sent them, back again, rose from her angry heart. "To have him care about as much for me as he would for a dog!" she cried, as she rode on.

By the merest of accidents, however, Sherlock and his friend did not go by the 10.50 express on the following morning, for the young barrister awoke with such a splitting headache, that he asked John to send him a cup of the strongest tea that had ever been made at the Sun, and to be furthermore so good as to defer their journey until the next day. Of course John assented, and Sherlock Holmes spent the forenoon in a darkened room with a five-days'-old Chelmsford paper to entertain himself withal. 

"It's nothing but the cigars, John," he said, repeatedly, to his friend’s inquiries. "Get me out of the place without my seeing the landlord; for if that man and I meet there will be bloodshed." 

“I’m quite sure it’s less the cigars than it is the other concoctions with which you poison your body,” was the reply. “You know that vile seven percent solution of cocaine cannot be good for your health.”

“Perhaps not, Dr. Watson,” Sherlock replied cuttingly, “but it is rather excellent for my sanity.” 

“You’ve been indulging too frequently of late,” was all John said, and he let the matter drop.

Fortunately for the peace of Stamford, it happened to be market-day at Chelmsford; and the worthy landlord had ridden off in his chaise-cart to purchase supplies for his house—among other things, perhaps, a fresh stock of those very cigars which had been so fatal in their effect upon Sherlock. 

The young men spent a dull, dawdling, stupid, unprofitable day; and toward dusk Mr. Holmes proposed that they should stroll down to the Court, and ask Molly to take them over the house. 

"It will kill a couple of hours, you know, John: and it seems a great pity to drag you away from Stamford without having shown you the old place, which, I give you my honor, is very well worth seeing." 

The sun was low in the skies as they took a short cut through the meadows, and crossed a stile into the avenue leading to the archway—a lurid, heavy-looking, ominous sunset, and a deathly stillness in the air, which frightened the birds that had a mind to sing, and left the field open to a few captious frogs croaking in the ditches. Still as the atmosphere was, the leaves rustled with that sinister, shivering motion which proceeds from no outer cause, but is rather an instinctive shudder of the frail branches, prescient of a coming storm. That stupid clock, which knew no middle course, and always skipped from one hour to the other, pointed to seven as the young men passed under the archway; but, for all that, it was nearer eight. 

They found Molly in the lime-walk, wandering listlessly up and down under the black shadow of the trees, from which every now and then a withered leaf flapped slowly to the ground. 

They walked on to the ruined well; and Molly told them some old legend connected with the spot—some gloomy story, such as those always attached to an old house, as if the past were one dark page of sorrow and crime. 

"We want to see the house before it is dark, Molly," said Sherlock. 

"Then we must be quick." she answered. "Come." 

She led the way through an open French window, modernized a few years before, into the library, and thence to the hall. 

In the hall they passed Lady Stamford’s maid, who looked furtively under her eyelashes at the two young men. 

They were going up-stairs, when Molly turned and spoke to the girl. 

"I should like to show these gentlemen Lady Stamford's rooms. Are they in good order, Jeannine?" 

"Yes, miss; but Lady Stamford keeps her chambers private. She won’t like –”

“Nonsense, Jeannine,” Molly snapped. “She’s annexed some of our best pieces in her dressing room! You need only tell her that visitors wished to see the paintings. And if it is my presence that is offensive, well, I shall remain here. I know I’m not my lady’s most welcome guest,” she added, wrinkling her nose. 

Jeannine, appeased, withdrew down the hall. 

“Take the light then, Sherlock,” Molly instructed. “Mr. Watson will follow you. I give you twenty minutes for your inspection of the paintings—that is, about a minute apiece—and at the end of that time I shall expect to see you return." 

Sherlock obeyed, and John following his friend, found himself standing amidst the elegant disorder of Lady Stamford's dressing-room. 

She had left the house in a hurry on her unlooked-for journey to London, and the whole of her glittering toilette apparatus lay about on the marble dressing-table. The atmosphere of the room was almost oppressive for the rich odors of perfumes in bottles whose gold stoppers had not been replaced. A bunch of hot-house flowers was withering upon a tiny writing-table. Two or three handsome dresses lay in a heap upon the ground, and the open doors of a wardrobe revealed the treasures within. Jewelry, ivory-backed hair-brushes, and exquisite china were scattered here and there about the apartment. John Watson saw his own face and gaunt figure reflected in the glass, and wondered to see how out of place he seemed among all these womanly luxuries. 

They went from the dressing-room to the boudoir, and through the boudoir into the ante-chamber, in which there were, as Molly had said, about twenty valuable paintings, besides my lady's portrait. 

My lady's portrait stood on an easel, covered with a green baize in the center of the octagonal chamber. It had been a fancy of the artist to paint her standing in this very room, and to make his background a faithful reproduction of the pictured walls. I am afraid the young man belonged to the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, for he had spent a most unconscionable time upon the accessories of this picture—upon my lady's perfect ringlets and the heavy folds of her crimson velvet dress. 

The two young men looked at the paintings on the walls first, leaving this unfinished portrait for a bonne bouche. 

By this time it was dark, the candle carried by Sherlock only making one nucleus of light as he moved about holding it before the pictures one by one. The broad, bare window looked out upon the pale sky, tinged with the last cold flicker of the twilight. The ivy rustled against the glass with the same ominous shiver as that which agitated every leaf in the garden, prophetic of the storm that was to come. 

"There are our friend's eternal white horses," said Sherlock, standing beside a Wouvermans. "Nicholas Poussin—Salvator—ha—hum! Now here is my lady’s portrait." 

He paused with his hand on the baize. They had only one candle between them, and in the dim light, John’s hair shone golden, and his eyes burned with a lively pleasure that Sherlock had not seen on his familiar face since their school days. 

It was that look, more than anything else, that caused Holmes to lean forward, through the small space separating the two men. Placing his fingertips lightly on John’s jaw and tilting his face upwards just so, Sherlock closed his eyes and kissed him, twice, softly and gently, upon the mouth. 

He drew back slightly, resting his forehead against John’s, and dared to look down again at his friend’s face. John’s eyes were still closed, his lips faintly parted. Unable to resist, Sherlock dipped his head once more, and then withdrew entirely. 

Somewhat awkwardly – for he had not meant to act on the mad impulse that had suddenly seized him – he cleared his throat. “We must hurry now. Molly is waiting. Here is the last – the portrait of my lady.” And he pulled the baize away from the picture on the easel. 

The men stood together, facing it. "It's an extraordinary picture," Holmes offered, surprised. His motive in directing his friend’s attention to the painting had been more to distract him from the strange raggedness of his breath and wildly beating heart than any interest in the work itself, and yet now that it had been revealed, how strange and interesting it was. 

Yes, the painter must have been a pre-Raphaelite. No one but a pre-Raphaelite would have painted, hair by hair, those feathery masses of ringlets, with every glimmer of gold, and every shadow of pale brown. No one but a pre-Raphaelite would have so exaggerated every attribute of that delicate face as to give a lurid brightness to the blonde complexion, and a strange, sinister light to the deep blue eyes. No one but a pre-Raphaelite could have given to that pretty pouting mouth the hard and almost wicked look it had in the portrait. 

It was so like, and yet so unlike. It was as if you had burned strange-colored fires before my lady's face, and by their influence brought out new lines and new expressions never seen in it before. The perfection of feature, the brilliancy of coloring, were there; but I suppose the painter had copied quaint mediaeval monstrosities until his brain had grown bewildered, for my lady, in his portrait of her, had something of the aspect of a beautiful fiend. 

Her crimson dress, exaggerated like all the rest in this strange picture, hung about her in folds that looked like flames, her fair head peeping out of the lurid mass of color as if out of a raging furnace. Indeed the crimson dress, the sunshine on the face, the red gold gleaming in the yellow hair, the ripe scarlet of the pouting lips, the glowing colors of each accessory of the minutely painted background, all combined to render the first effect of the painting by no means an agreeable one. 

But strange as the picture was, it could not have made any great impression on John Watson, for he stood before it without uttering a word—only staring blankly at the painted canvas, his arms hanging loosely by his side. He stood so long in this attitude, that Sherlock turned to him at last. 

"Why, John, have you gone to sleep?" 

"I… I had, almost." 

"You've caught a cold from standing in this damp tapestried room,” Sherlock replied with unusual nervousness. “Mark my words, John, you've caught a cold; you're as hoarse as a raven. But come along." 

Sherlock Holmes placed a guiding hand on the back of his friend’s neck, and they walked back together through the passage—John very quiet, but scarcely more quiet than usual. 

They found Molly in the nursery waiting for them. 

"Well?" she said, interrogatively. 

"We managed it capitally,” said Sherlock. “But I don't like the portrait; there's something odd about it." 

"There is," said Molly; "I've a strange fancy on that point. I think that sometimes a painter is in a manner inspired, and is able to see, through the normal expression of the face, another expression that is equally a part of it, though not to be perceived by common eyes. We have never seen my lady look as she does in that picture; but I think that she could look so." 

“Let us hope,” replied Sherlock, “that we never find out.” 

And then, having borrowed an umbrella in case of being overtaken by the coming storm, Holmes left the Court, leading a still-silent John Watson away with him. The one hand of the stupid clock had skipped to nine by the time they reached the archway; but before they could pass under its shadow they had to step aside to allow a carriage to dash past them. It was a fly from the village, but Lady Stamford's fair face peeped out at the window. Dark as it was, she could see the two figures of the young men black against the dusk. 

"Who is that?" she asked, putting out her head. "Is it the gardener?" 

"No, my lady," said Sir Michael; "it is the dutiful Sherlock Holmes and his friend." 

The fly drew up at the door, and the surprised servants came out to welcome their master and mistress. 

"I think the storm will hold off to-night," said the baronet looking up at the sky; "but we shall certainly have it tomorrow."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Sunday Summer Serial: thanks to redscudery for the brilliant idea!
> 
> Thursday Teasers posted on my Tumblr (http://doctornerdington.tumblr.com).
> 
> Feedback appreciated.
> 
> Next week: "The Storm."


	3. The Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a posthumous collaboration with Mary Elizabeth Braddon; I've adapted her novel Lady Audley's Secret, and retained much of her original structure and language. ALL CREDIT TO HER.
> 
> Current rating: all audiences (will change to explicit in later chapters).
> 
> Braddon's novel was originally published serially, as this adaptation is. Chapter updates every Sunday throughout the summer!

Sir Michael was mistaken in his prophecy upon the weather. The storm did not hold off until next day, but burst with terrible fury over the village about half an hour before midnight. 

Sherlock Holmes took the thunder and lightning with the same composure with which he accepted all the other terrors of life. He lay on a sofa in the sitting-room, ostensibly reading the five-days-old Chelmsford paper, but actually regarding his dear friend, who sat opposite the open window listening to the thunder. Holmes took a large sip from his tumbler of brandy, already mostly empty, and looked down again at his newspaper. 

He could not, however, pretend interest in such a rag for long, not when his interest was so very much more engaged with the man before him. Sherlock’s face warmed as he remembered the sensation of John’s lips against his; smooth, warm, and unprotesting. He looked at John's white face as he sat opposite the open window listening to the thunder, and staring at the black sky, rent every now and then by forked streaks of steel-blue lightning. 

"John," said Sherlock, after watching him for some time, "are you troubled?" 

"No," he answered, curtly. 

"As for what I am, John, you know that it is constitutional. I doubt very much that I surprised you tonight, but if I have offended you, I am sorry." 

"You have not." 

Sherlock felt his heart clench, for John’s words were not matched by his countenance: white and haggard, with great hollow eyes staring out at the sky as if they were fixed upon a ghost. 

“I can see that you are distressed." 

"And I tell you that I am not." 

Sherlock groaned with frustration. "John Watson, you are not only offended by my actions tonight, but you are savage with yourself for being offended, and with me for seeing it." 

"If you say another word to me, I shall knock you down," said John coldly; having said which, he strode furiously out of the room, banging the door after him with a violence that shook the house. Those inky clouds, which had shut in the sultry earth as if with a roof of hot iron, poured out their blackness in a sudden deluge as John left the room; but the young man took no notice of the rain; for he walked straight down-stairs to the inn door, and went out into the wet high road. He walked up and down, up and down, in the soaking shower for about twenty minutes, and then, re-entering the inn, strode up to his bedroom. 

Sherlock Holmes met him deliberately on the landing, with his hair beaten about his white face, and his garments dripping wet. Holmes’ own face had scarcely more colour.

"Are you going to bed, John?" 

"Yes." 

"But you have no candle." 

"I don't want one." 

"But look at your clothes, man! Do you see the wet streaming down your coat-sleeves? What on earth made you go out upon such a night?" 

"I am tired, and want to go to bed," John repeated resolutely, not looking at Sherlock. 

"You'll take some hot brandy-and-water, surely?" 

Sherlock Holmes stood in his friend's way as he spoke, anxious to prevent his going to bed in the state he was in; but John pushed him fiercely aside, and, striding past him, said, in the same hoarse voice Sherlock had noticed at the Court: 

"Let me alone, Sherlock Holmes! Keep clear of me – if you can." 

Sherlock followed John to his bedroom, but the young man banged the door in his face, so there was nothing for it but to leave Mr. Watson to himself, to recover his temper as best he might. 

"He is surprised, that is all" thought Sherlock wildly. “He will settle. He will calm. I must master myself, and not surprise him again. All shall be as it was, and John shall ever be my friend. I only wish…” 

He retired, then, to his own bed, indifferent to the thunder, which seemed to shake him in his bed, and the lightning playing fitfully round the razors in his open dressing-case. He did not sleep that night.

* * * * *

The storm rolled away from the quiet village, and when Sherlock rose the next morning it was to see bright sunshine, and a peep of cloudless sky between the white curtains of his bedroom window. 

It was one of those serene and lovely mornings that sometimes succeed a storm. The birds sang loud and cheerily, the yellow corn uplifted itself in the broad fields, and waved proudly after its sharp tussle with the tempest, which had done its best to beat down the heavy ears with cruel wind and driving rain half the night through. The vine-leaves clustering round Sherlock's window fluttered with a joyous rustling, shaking the rain-drops in diamond showers from every spray and tendril. So cheerful, indeed, was the morning that it nearly vanquished Sherlock’s trepidation at the thought of seeing his friend again. He dressed carefully for breakfast, arranging his hair neatly and looping his usual scarf of rich blue silk around his neck.

He found John waiting for him at the breakfast-table. 

Watson was very pale, but perfectly tranquil—if anything, indeed, more cheerful than usual. 

He shook Sherlock by the hand with something of that hearty manner for which he had been distinguished before the one affliction of his life overtook and shipwrecked him. 

"Forgive me, Sherlock," he said, frankly, "for my surly temper of last night. You were quite correct in your assertion; the thunderstorm did upset me. It always had the same effect upon me in my youth." 

"The thunderstorm,” Sherlock repeated. “I see." That clenching feeling had returned to his heart, although he could not for the life of him think why. He was pleased, he must be pleased, that his indiscretion of the previous evening had been put behind them. Perhaps his rash act had been the result of a sort of internal storm – he was not overly familiar with such things – and perhaps he could hope that it had blown itself out. 

"It's a glorious morning,” John continued. “Suppose we stroll about all day, take another turn with the rod and line, and go up to town by the train that leaves here at 6.15 in the evening?" 

Sherlock Holmes would have assented to a far more disagreeable proposition than this, rather than have taken the trouble to oppose his friend, so the matter was immediately agreed upon; and after they had finished their breakfast, and ordered a four o'clock dinner, John Watson took the fishing-rod across his broad shoulders, and strode out of the house with his friend and companion. 

* * * * *

But if Sherlock and John passed a wretched night, the inhabitants of Stamford Court fared little better. Lady Stamford confessed herself terribly frightened of the lightning. She had her bedstead wheeled into a corner of the room, and with the heavy curtains drawn tightly round her, she lay with her face buried in the pillow, shuddering convulsively at every sound of the tempest without. Sir Michael himself almost trembled for this fragile creature, whom it was his happy privilege to protect and defend. My lady would not consent to undress till nearly three o'clock in the morning, when the last lingering peal of thunder had died away among the distant hills. Until that hour she lay in the handsome silk dress in which she had traveled, huddled together among the bedclothes, only looking up now and then with a scared face to ask if the storm was over. 

Toward four o'clock her husband, who spent the night in watching by her bedside, saw her drop off into a deep sleep, from which she did not awake for nearly five hours. 

But she came into the breakfast-room, at half-past nine o'clock, singing a little Scotch melody, her cheeks tinged with as delicate a pink as the pale hue of her muslin morning dress. Like the birds and the flowers, she seemed to recover her beauty and joyousness in the morning sunshine. She tripped lightly out onto the lawn, gathering a last lingering rosebud here and there, and a sprig or two of geranium, and returning through the dewy grass, warbling long cadences for very happiness of heart, and looking as fresh and radiant as the flowers in her hands. The baronet caught her in his strong arms as she came in through the open window. 

"My pretty one," he said, "my darling, what happiness to see you your own merry self again! Do you know, Mary, that once last night, when you looked out through the dark-green bed-curtains, with your poor, white face, and the purple rims round your hollow eyes, I had almost a difficulty to recognize my little wife in that terrified, agonized-looking creature, crying out about the storm. Thank God for the morning sun, which has brought back the rosy cheeks and bright smile! I hope to Heaven, Mary, I shall never again see you look as you did last night." 

She stood on tiptoe to kiss him, and then was only tall enough to reach. She told him, laughing, that she had always been a silly, frightened creature—frightened of dogs, frightened of cattle, frightened of a thunderstorm, frightened of a rough sea. "Frightened of everything and everybody but my dear, noble, handsome husband," she said. 

The night before, she had found the carpet in her dressing-room disarranged, and had inquired into the mystery of the disturbance. She chid Miss Molly in a playful, laughing way, for her boldness in introducing two great men into my lady's rooms. 

"And they had the audacity to look at my picture, Molly," she said, with mock indignation. "I found the baize thrown on the ground, and a great man's glove on the carpet. Look!" 

She held up a thick driving glove as she spoke. It was John's, which he had dropped looking at the picture. 

"I shall go up to the Sun, and ask those boys to dinner," Sir Michael said, as he left the Court upon his morning walk around his farm. 

Lady Stamford flitted from room to room in the bright September sunshine—now sitting down to the piano to trill out a ballad, or the first page of an Italian bravura, or running with rapid fingers through a brilliant waltz—now hovering about a stand of hot-house flowers, doing amateur gardening with a pair of fairy-like, silver-mounted embroidery scissors—now strolling into her dressing-room to talk to Jeannine Marks, and have her curls rearranged for the third or fourth time; for the ringlets were always getting into disorder, and gave no little trouble to Lady Stamford's maid. 

My lady seemed, on this particular September day, restless from very joyousness of spirit, and unable to stay long in one place, or occupy herself with one thing. 

While Lady Stamford amused herself in her own frivolous fashion, the two young men strolled slowly along the margin of the stream until they reached a shady corner where the water was deep and still, and the long branches of the willows trailed into the brook. An unusual silence lay between them, a tension that neither man quite knew how to break.

John Watson took the fishing-rod, while Sherlock stretched himself at full length on a railway rug, and balancing his hat upon his nose as a screen from the sunshine, fell fast asleep. 

Those were happy fish in the stream on the banks of which Mr. Watson was seated. They might have amused themselves to their hearts' content with timid nibbles at this gentleman's bait without in any manner endangering their safety; for John only stared vacantly in the water, holding his rod in a loose, listless hand, and with a strange, far-away look in his eyes. From time to time, his gaze fell upon his sleeping friend, and a look of soft affection stole over him. As the church clock struck two he threw down his rod, and, striding away along the bank, left Sherlock Holmes to enjoy a nap which, according to that gentleman's habits, was by no means unlikely to last for two or three hours (for he slept irregularly, but solidly enough when fatigue overtook him). About a quarter of a mile further on John crossed a rustic bridge, and struck into the meadows which led to Stamford Court. 

The birds had sung so much all the morning, that they had, perhaps, by this time grown tired; the lazy cattle were asleep in the meadows; Sir Michael was still away on his morning's ramble; Miss Molly had scampered off an hour before on her chestnut mare; the servants were all at dinner in the back part of the house; and my lady had strolled, book in hand, into the shadowy lime-walk; so the gray old building had never worn a more peaceful aspect than on that bright afternoon when John Watson walked across the lawn to ring a sonorous peal at the sturdy, iron-bound oak door. 

The servant who answered his summons told him that Sir Michael was out, and my lady walking in the lime-tree avenue. 

He looked a little disappointed at this intelligence, and muttering something about wishing to see my lady, or going to look for my lady (the servant did not clearly distinguish his words), strode away from the door without leaving either card or message for the family. 

It was full an hour and a half after this when Lady Stamford returned to the house, not coming from the lime-walk, but from exactly the opposite direction, carrying her open book in her hand, and singing as she came. Molly had just dismounted from her mare, and stood in the low-arched doorway, with her great Newfoundland dog by her side. 

The dog, which had never liked my lady, showed his teeth with a suppressed growl. 

"Send that horrid animal away, Molly," Lady Stamford said, impatiently. "The brute knows that I am frightened of him, and takes advantage of my terror. And yet they call the creatures generous and noble-hearted! Bah, Caesar! I hate you, and you hate me; and if you met me in the dark in some narrow passage you would fly at my throat and strangle me, wouldn't you?" 

My lady, safely sheltered behind her step-daughter, shook her yellow curls at the angry animal, and defied him maliciously. 

"Do you know, Lady Stamford, that Mr. Watson, the young widower, has been here asking for Sir Michael and you?" 

Mary Stamford lifted her penciled eyebrows. "I thought they were coming to dinner," she said. "Surely we shall have enough of them then." 

She had a heap of wild autumn flowers in the skirt of her muslin dress. She had come through the fields at the back of the Court, gathering the hedge-row blossoms in her way. She ran lightly up the broad staircase to her own rooms. John's glove lay on her boudoir table. Lady Stamford rung the bell violently, and it was answered by Jeannine Marks. "Take that litter away," she said, sharply. The girl collected the glove and a few withered flowers and torn papers lying on the table into her apron. 

"What have you been doing all this morning?" asked my lady. "Not wasting your time, I hope?" 

"No, my lady, I have been altering the blue dress. It is rather dark on this side of the house, so I took it up to my own room, and worked at the window." 

The girl turned to leave the room as she spoke, but Lady Stamford grasped her arm as she passed by. 

The eyes of the two women met. 

"Jeannine Marks," said my lady softly, drawing her close, "you are a lovely, industrious girl, and while I live and am prosperous, you shall never want a firm friend or a twenty-pound note." 

* * * * *

When Sherlock Holmes awoke he was surprised to see the fishing-rod lying on the bank, the line trailing idly in the water, and the float bobbing harmlessly up and down in the afternoon sunshine. The young barrister was a long time stretching his arms and legs in various directions to convince himself, by means of such exercise, that he still retained the proper use of those members; then, with a mighty effort, he contrived to rise from the grass, and having deliberately folded his railway rug into a convenient shape for carrying over his shoulder, he strolled away to look for John Watson. 

Once or twice he gave a sleepy shout, scarcely loud enough to scare the birds in the branches above his head, or the trout in the stream at his feet: but receiving no answer, grew tired of the exertion, and dawdled on, yawning as he went, and still looking for John Watson. 

By-and-by he took out his watch, and was surprised to find that it was a quarter past four. 

"Why, the selfish beggar must have gone home to his dinner!" he muttered, reflectively; "and yet I would have thought he’d have the courtesy to rouse me." 

By the time Holmes strolled in at the front door of the Sun, the clocks were striking five. He so fully expected to find John Watson waiting for him in the little sitting-room, that the absence of that gentleman seemed to give the apartment a dreary look, and Sherlock groaned aloud. 

"This is lively!" he said. "A cold dinner, and nobody to eat it with!" 

The landlord of the Sun came himself to apologize for his ruined dishes. 

"As fine a pair of ducks, Mr. Holmes, as ever you clapped eyes on, but burnt up to a cinder, along of being kep' hot." 

"Never mind the ducks," Sherlock said impatiently; "where's Mr. Watson?" 

"He ain't been in, sir, since you went out together this morning." 

"What!" cried Sherlock. "Why, in heaven's name, what has the man done with himself?" 

He walked to the window and looked out upon the broad, white high road. There was a wagon laden with trusses of hay crawling slowly past, the lazy horses and the lazy wagoner drooping their heads with a weary stoop under the afternoon's sunshine. There was a flock of sheep straggling about the road, with a dog running himself into a fever in the endeavor to keep them decently together. There were some bricklayers just released from work—a tinker mending some kettles by the roadside; there was a dog-cart dashing down the road, carrying the master of the Stamford hounds to his seven o'clock dinner; there were a dozen common village sights and sounds that mixed themselves up into a cheerful bustle and confusion; but there was no John Watson. 

"I shall go and look for him," said Sherlock, snatching up his hat and walking straight out of the house. 

But the question was where to look for him. He certainly was not by the trout stream, so it was no good going back there in search of him. Sherlock was standing before the inn, deliberating on what was best to be done, when the landlord came out after him. 

"I forgot to tell you, Mr. Holmes, as how Sir Michael called here five minutes after you was gone, and left a message, asking of you and the other gentleman to go down to dinner at the Court." 

"Then I shouldn't wonder," said Sherlock, "if Watson has gone down to the Court without me. It isn't like him, but it's just possible that he has done it." He was surprised, and not a little hurt, at the lengths to which John seemed to be going in order to put distance between them. 

It was six o'clock when Sherlock knocked at the door of Stamford Court. He did not ask to see any of the family, but inquired at once for his friend. 

Yes, the servant told him; Mr. Watson had been there at two o'clock or a little after. 

"And not since?" 

"No, not since." 

Was the man sure that it was at two Mr. Watson called? Sherlock asked. 

Yes, perfectly sure. He remembered the hour because it was the servants' dinner hour, and he had left the table to open the door to Mr. Watson. 

"Why, what can have become of the man?" thought Sherlock, as he turned his back upon the Court. "From two till six—four good hours—and no signs of him!" 

If anyone had previously ventured to tell Mr. Sherlock Holmes that he could possibly feel a strong attachment to any creature breathing, that cynical gentleman would have elevated his eyebrows in supreme contempt at the preposterous notion. Yet here he was, flurried and anxious, bewildering his brain by all manner of conjectures about his missing friend. 

"I haven’t fretted so since I was a boy," he murmured, as he hurried across one of Sir Michael's meadows in the direction of the village; "and the worst of it is, that I haven't the most remote idea where I am going. What has happened to my mind?" 

Here he crossed another meadow, and then seating himself upon a stile, rested his elbows upon his knees, buried his face in his hands, and set himself seriously to think the matter out. 

"I have it," he said, after a few minutes' thought; "the railway station!" He sprang over the stile, and started off in the direction of the little red brick building. 

There was no train expected for another half hour, and the clerk was taking his tea in an apartment on one side of the office, on the door of which was inscribed in large, white letters, "Private." 

But Mr. Holmes was too much occupied with the one idea of looking for his friend to pay any attention to this warning. He strode at once to the door, and rattling his cane against it, brought the clerk out of his sanctum in a perspiration from hot tea, and with his mouth full of bread and butter. 

"Do you remember the gentleman that came down to the village with me, Smithers?" asked Sherlock. 

"Well, to tell you the real truth, Mr. Holmes, I can't say that I do. You came by the four o'clock, if you remember, and there's always a good many passengers by that train." 

"You don't remember him, then?" 

"Not to my knowledge, sir." 

"That's provoking! I want to know, Smithers, whether he has taken a ticket for London since two o'clock to-day. He's shorter than me, and fairer, handsome and broad-chested, with light brown hair. You couldn't well mistake him." 

"There was four or five gentlemen as took tickets for the 3.30 up," said the clerk rather vaguely, casting an anxious glance over his shoulder at his wife, who looked by no means pleased at this interruption to the harmony of the tea-table. 

"Four or five gentlemen! But did either of them answer to the description of my friend?" 

"Well, I think one of them had light brown hair, sir." 

"Light brown hair?" 

"Well, I don't know, but it was brownish-like." 

"Was he dressed in gray?" 

"I believe it was gray; a great many gents wear gray. He asked for the ticket sharp and short-like, and when he'd got it walked straight out onto the platform whistling." 

"That's John," said Sherlock. "Thank you, Smithers; I needn't trouble you anymore.” 

“It's as clear as daylight," he muttered to himself as he left the station; "I have offended him after all. I feared it. He's gone back to London without saying a word. I'll leave myself by the first train tomorrow morning, and we shall have this out. For tonight—I must find distraction. Distraction and a touch of morphia will see me through it. Why, I may as well go down to the Court and make the acquaintance of the new Lady Stamford. They don't dine till seven; if I get back across the fields I shall be in time. 

“Sherlock,” he added sternly to himself, “this sort of thing will never do; you are quite losing your head."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Sunday Summer Serial: thanks to redscudery for the brilliant idea!
> 
> Thursday Teasers posted on my Tumblr (http://doctornerdington.tumblr.com).
> 
> Feedback appreciated.
> 
> Next week: Missing!


	4. Missing!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "To think," Sherlock said, meditatively, "that it is possible to care so much for a fellow. It’s not the same as the dull men I’ve known before. It’s not the same at all. But come what may, I'll go up to town after him the first thing to-morrow morning. I’ll find him in our chambers, and we’ll hash this thing out. I was mad to kiss him; quite mad. We shall agree to forget the entire evening, and resume our friendship as before.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a posthumous collaboration with Mary Elizabeth Braddon; I've adapted her novel Lady Audley's Secret, and retained much of her original structure and language. ALL CREDIT TO HER.
> 
> Current rating: all audiences (will change to explicit in later chapters).
> 
> Braddon's novel was originally published serially, as this adaptation is. Chapter updates every Sunday throughout the summer.

Sherlock found Sir Michael and Lady Stamford in the drawing-room. My lady was sitting on a music-stool before the grand piano, turning over the leaves of some new music. She twirled upon the revolving seat, making a rustling with her silk flounces, as Mr. Sherlock Holmes’ name was announced; then, leaving the piano, she made him a pretty, mock ceremonious courtesy.

"Thank you so much for the furs," she said, holding out her little fingers, all glittering and twinkling with the diamonds she wore upon them; "How good it was of you to get them for me."

Sherlock had almost forgotten the commission he had executed for Lady Stamford during his Russian expedition. His mind was so full of John Watson that he only acknowledged my lady's gratitude by a bow.

“And where is your friend tonight?” she continued. “We were so looking forward to meeting him.”

"It seems he has gone back to London, leaving me in the lurch."

"What a dreadful catastrophe!" said Molly, maliciously, "since Pythias, in the person of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, cannot exist for half an hour without Damon, commonly known as John Watson."

"He's a very good fellow," Sherlock said, stoutly; "and to tell the honest truth, I'm rather uneasy about him."

"Uneasy about him!" My lady was quite anxious to know why Sherlock was uneasy about his friend.

"I'll tell you why, Lady Stamford," answered the young barrister. He had wished to distract his mind from his worry, but somehow found himself unable to stop talking about it; now, although he could hardly reveal the whole reason for his concern, he could at least disclose a part of it. "John had a bitter blow a year ago in the death of his wife and child. He has never got over that trouble. He takes life pretty quietly—more quietly than I do—but he talks very strangely at times, and I sometimes think that one day this grief will get the better of him."

Holmes spoke vaguely, but all three of his listeners understood his meaning.

There was a brief pause, during which Lady Stamford arranged her yellow ringlets by the aid of the glass over the console table opposite to her.

"Dear me!" she said, "this is very strange. I did not think men were capable of these deep and lasting affections. I thought that one pretty face was as good as another pretty face to them; and that when number one with blue eyes and fair hair died, they had only to look out for number two, with dark eyes and black hair, by way of variety."

"John Watson is not one of those men."

"How sad!" murmured Lady Stamford. "It seems almost cruel of Mrs. Watson to die, and grieve her poor husband so much."

"Molly is right about her," thought Sherlock with distaste as he looked down at her pretty face.

My lady was very charming at the dinner-table; she professed the most bewitching incapacity for carving the pheasant set before her, and called Sherlock to her assistance.

"I could carve a leg of mutton at Mr. Dawson's," she said, laughing; "but a leg of mutton is so easy, and then I used to stand up."

Sir Michael looked on with a proud delight in her beauty and fascination.

"I am so glad to see my poor little woman in her usual good spirits once more," he said. "She was very down-hearted yesterday at a disappointment she met with in London."

"A disappointment!"

"Yes, Mr. Holmes, a very cruel one," answered my lady. "I received the other morning a telegraphic message from my dear old friend and school-mistress, telling me that she was dying, and that if I wanted to see her again, I must hasten to her immediately. The telegraphic dispatch contained no address, and of course, from that very circumstance, I imagined that she must be living in the house in which I left her two years ago. Sir Michael and I hurried up to town immediately, and drove straight to the old address. The house was occupied by strange people, who could give me no tidings of my friend. It is in a retired place, where there are very few tradespeople about. Sir Michael made inquiries at the few shops there are, but, after taking an immense deal of trouble, could discover nothing whatever likely to lead to the information we wanted. I have no friends in London, and had therefore no one to assist me except my dear, generous husband, who did all in his power, but in vain, to find my friend's new residence."

"It was very foolish not to send the address in the telegraphic message," said Sherlock.

"When people are dying it is not so easy to think of all these things," murmured my lady, looking reproachfully at Mr. Holmes with her soft blue eyes.

In spite of Lady Stamford's fascination, Sherlock could not overcome a vague feeling of uneasiness on this quiet September evening.

As he sat in the deep embrasure of a mullioned window, talking to my lady, his mind wandered away to shady Figtree Court, and he thought of John Watson smoking his solitary cigar in the room with the flowers at the window. He wondered what he was thinking of, and what sort of reception he might expect upon his own return the following day. His traitorous mind whispered, John hadn’t seemed to mind the kiss. Had let him repeat the act, in fact, and had seemed to respond. Still, his subsequent actions were clear, and Sherlock must put such things from his mind.

"I wish I'd never felt any friendliness for the fellow," he thought, when he realized with a start how much of his mind was occupied with the man.

My lady's pretty musical prattle ran on as merrily and continuously as the babble in some brook; and still Sherlock's thoughts returned, in spite of himself, to John Watson.

He thought of him hurrying down to catch his train back to London. He thought of him as he had often seen him sitting over the Times and smoking a cigar. Once he thought of him with a shiver, lying cold and stiff at the bottom of some shallow stream with his dead face turned toward the darkening sky.

Lady Stamford noticed his abstraction, and asked him what he was thinking of.

"John Watson," he answered abruptly.

She gave a little nervous shudder.

"Upon my word," she said, "you make me quite uncomfortable by the way in which you talk of Mr. Watson. One would think that something extraordinary had happened to him."

"God forbid. But I cannot help feeling uneasy about him."

Later in the evening Sir Michael asked for some music, and my lady went to the piano. Sherlock Holmes strolled after her to the instrument to turn over the leaves of her music; but she played from memory, and he was spared the trouble his gallantry would have imposed upon him.

He carried a pair of lighted candles to the piano, and arranged them conveniently for the pretty musician. She struck a few chords, and then wandered into a pensive sonata of Beethoven's. It was one of the many paradoxes in her character, that love of somber and melancholy melodies, so opposite to her gay nature.

Sherlock Holmes lingered by her side, and as he had no occupation in turning over the leaves of her music, he amused himself by watching her jeweled, white hands gliding softly over the keys, with the lace sleeves dropping away from, her graceful, arched wrists. He looked at her pretty fingers one by one; this one glittering with a ruby heart; that encircled by an emerald serpent; and about them all a starry glitter of diamonds. From the fingers his eyes wandered to the rounded wrists: the broad, flat, gold bracelet upon her right wrist dropped over her hand, as she executed a rapid passage. She stopped abruptly to rearrange it; but before she could do so Holmes noticed a bruise upon her delicate skin.

"You have hurt your arm, Lady Stamford!" he exclaimed. She hastily replaced the bracelet.

"It is nothing," she said. "I am unfortunate in having a skin which the slightest touch bruises."

She went on playing, but Sir Michael came across the room to look into the matter of the bruise upon his wife's pretty wrist.

"What is it, Mary?" he asked; "and how did it happen?"

"How foolish you all are to trouble yourselves about anything so absurd!" said Lady Stamford, laughing. "I am rather absent in mind, and amused myself a few days ago by tying a piece of ribbon around my arm so tightly, that it left a bruise when I removed it."

"Hum!" thought Sherlock. "My lady tells little childish white lies; the bruise is of a more recent date than a few days ago; the skin has only just begun to change color."

Sir Michael took the slender wrist in his strong hand.

"Hold the candle, Sherlock," he said, "and let us look at this poor little arm."

It was not one bruise, but four slender, purple marks, such as might have been made by the four fingers of a powerful hand, that had grasped the delicate wrist a shade too roughly. A narrow ribbon, bound tightly, might have left some such marks, it is true, and my lady protested once more that, to the best of her recollection, that must have been how they were made.

Across one of the faint purple marks there was a darker tinge, as if a ring worn on one of those strong and cruel fingers had been ground into the tender flesh.

"Yes, my lady lies," thought Sherlock.

He wished his relations good-night and good-by at about half past ten o'clock; he should run up to London by the first train to look for John in Figtree Court.

"If I don't find him there –"

"What then?" asked my lady, almost mockingly.

"I shall think that something strange has happened."

Sherlock Holmes felt very low-spirited as he walked slowly home between the shadowy meadows; more low-spirited still when he re-entered the sitting room at Sun Inn, where he and John had lounged together, staring out of the window and smoking their cigars.

"To think," he said, meditatively, "that it is possible to care so much for a fellow. It’s not the same as the dull men I’ve known before. It’s not the same at all. But come what may, I'll go up to town after him the first thing to-morrow morning. I’ll find him in our chambers, and we’ll hash this thing out. I was mad to kiss him; quite mad. We shall agree to forget the entire evening, and resume our friendship as before.”

And such was Holmes’ nature that when he resolved upon any course of action, he had a certain dogged, iron-like obstinacy that pushed him on to the fulfillment of his purpose. He was remarkably clear-sighted upon any point to which he ever gave his serious attention, and he gave John Watson very serious attention indeed, for a better man had never crossed his path.

* * * * *

The September sunlight sparkled upon the fountain in the Temple Gardens when Sherlock Holmes returned to Figtree Court early the following morning.

He found the bees buzzing lazily against the window in the pretty little room in which John had slept, but the apartment was in the same prim order in which the housekeeper had arranged it after the departure of the two young men—not a chair displaced, or so much as the lid of a cigar-box lifted, to bespeak the presence of John Watson. With a last, lingering hope, he searched upon the mantelpieces and tables of his rooms, on the chance of finding some letter left by John.

But as he sat looking stupidly around the room, a slipshod foot upon the staircase without bespoke the advent of that very Mrs. Hudson who waited upon the two young men.

No, Mr. Watson had not come home; she had looked in as early as six o'clock that morning, and found the chambers empty.

"Had anything happened to the poor, dear gentleman?" she asked, seeing Sherlock Holmes's pale face.

He turned around upon her quite savagely at this question.

Happened to him! What should happen to him? They had only parted at two o'clock the day before.

Mrs. Hudson would have related to him the history of a poor dear young engine-driver, who had once lodged with her, and who went out, after eating a hearty dinner, in the best of spirits, to meet with his death from the concussion of an express and a luggage train; but Sherlock put on his hat again, and walked straight out of the house before the honest woman could begin her pitiful story.

His only thought now was to find John Watson and clear the air between them so that their friendship could continue; if he was not at Stamford, and not at Figtree Court, he could only reasonably be expected to be in two places: at his wife’s graveside in Portsmouth, or on an outbound steamer for India.

Pulling out a reference volume, Holmes consulted the shipping lists and timings of vessels outbound, and constructed an efficient search plan that took him through the southern docks, the Portsmouth graveyard, and back to London within a reasonably short time. With a shouted farewell to Mrs. Hudson, he hared off to catch his train before he could either observe or question the urgency of his manner.

His seach, however, proved fruitless. John Watson was not at Maria’s graveside, nor had he been there at all recently. Nor had he been seen at the docks, nor anywhere else Holmes could think to inquire.

Sherlock Holmes left Southampton by the mail, and let himself into his chambers just as the dawn was creeping cold and gray into the solitary rooms.

There were several letters in the box behind the door, but there was none from John Watson.

The young barrister had been awake for many dozens of hours, and had passed a long day hurrying from place to place. His mind was beginning to grow confused upon the point of time. It seemed to him months since he had lost sight of John Watson. It was so difficult to believe that it was less than forty-eight hours ago that the young man had left him asleep under the willows by the trout stream.

His eyes were painfully weary for want of sleep, and yet he could not seem to keep still. He searched about the room for some time, looking in all sorts of impossible places for a letter from John Watson, and then threw himself dressed upon his friend's bed, in the room with the sunny window and the flowers.

"I shall wait for to-morrow morning's post," he said; "and if that brings no letter from John, I shall start for the Liverpool docks without a moment's delay, for he may just have gone up to secure a quicker passage."

Sherlock had used the intense physical activity of the day to quiet his anxious brain; now that his frantic running about had ceased, that organ took over entirely, and all he could think of was John. He was unused to caring about the feelings of another. What had John felt, that night in Lady Stamford’s chamber? Why on earth had Sherlock acted so rashly? Why did John not stop him? Why had he disappeared? What if he could not bear to look Sherlock in the face, ever again? How empty would Sherlock’s rooms be, again, without John smoking at the window?

Sherlock buried his head in John’s pillow, catching his breath at the traces of John’s scent that remained after Mrs. Hudson’s attentions. Never in his life had he felt this deep longing to see, speak with, and – yes – to touch another. He groaned aloud – it was intolerable to be so forced into a state of unnatural inaction.

Swiftly he rose, and went over to the hidden cupboard in which he stockpiled those substances known to have an effect upon the human mind. He had made many experiments with substances such as these, seeking mental enhancement, novelty of sensation, and heightened stimulation. Now, however, he simply wanted to sleep. He selected a small phial of milky liquid, and, mixing several drops into a cup of water, drank it down.

He was thoroughly exhausted, and fell into a heavy sleep—a sleep which was profound without being in any way refreshing, for he was tormented all the time by disagreeable dreams—dreams which were painful, not from any horror in themselves, but from a vague and wearying sense of their confusion and absurdity.

At one time he was pursuing strange people and entering strange houses in the endeavor to unravel the mystery of the telegraphic dispatch; at another time he was in the church-yard at Portsmouth, gazing at the headstone of John’s dead wife. Once in the long, rambling mystery of these dreams he went to the grave, and found this headstone gone, and on remonstrating with the stonemason, was told that the man had a reason for removing the inscription; for it had been written incorrectly, and must be redone. The new text rightly named the grave’s inhabitant as one Sherlock Holmes.

In another dream he saw the grave of Maria Watson open, and while he waited, with the cold horror lifting up his hair, to see the dead woman rise and stand before him with her stiff, charnel-house drapery clinging about her rigid limbs, Lady Stamford tripped gaily out of the open grave, dressed in the crimson velvet robes in which the artist had painted her, and with her ringlets flashing like red gold in the unearthly light that shone about her.

But into all these dreams the places he had last been in, and the people with whom he had last been concerned, were dimly interwoven—sometimes his uncle; sometimes Molly; oftenest of all my lady; the trout stream in Essex; the lime-walk at the Court. Once he was walking in the black shadows of this long avenue, with Lady Stamford hanging on his arm, when suddenly they heard a great knocking in the distance, and my lady wound her slender arms around him, crying out that it was the day of judgment, and that all wicked secrets must now be told. Looking at her as she shrieked this in his ear, he saw that her face had grown ghastly white, and that her beautiful golden ringlets were changing into serpents, and slowly creeping down her fair neck.

He started from his dream to find that there was some one really knocking at the outer door of his chambers.

It was a dreary, wet morning, the rain beating against the windows. Sherlock could not tell how long the person had been knocking. He had mixed the sound with his dreams, and when he woke he was only half conscious of other things.

"It's Mrs. Hudson, I dare say," he muttered. "She may knock again for all I care. Why can't she use her duplicate key, instead of dragging a man out of bed when he's half dead with fatigue?"

The person, whoever it was, did knock again, and then desisted, apparently tired out; but about a minute afterward a key turned in the door.

"She had her key with her all the time, then," said Sherlock. "I'm very glad I didn't get up."

The door between the sitting-room and bed-room was half open, and he could see the housekeeper bustling about, dusting the furniture, and rearranging things that had never been disarranged.

"Is that you, Mrs. Hudson?" he asked.

"Yes, sir,"

"Then why, in goodness' name, did you make that row at the door, when you had a key with you all the time?"

"A row at the door, sir?"

"Yes; that infernal knocking."

"Sure I never knocked, Mister Holmes, but walked straight in with my key—"

"Then who did knock? There's been some one kicking up a row at that door for a quarter of an hour, I should think; you must have met him going down-stairs."

"But I'm rather late this morning, sir, for I've been in Mr. Martin's rooms first, and I've come straight from the floor above."

"Then you didn't see any one at the door, or on the stairs?"

"Not a mortal soul, sir."

"Was ever anything so provoking?" said Sherlock. "To think that I should have let this person go away without ascertaining who he was, or what he wanted! How do I know that it was not someone with a message or a letter from John Watson?"

"Sure if it was, sir, he'll come again," said Mrs. Hudson, soothingly.

"Yes, of course, if it was anything of consequence he'll come again," muttered Sherlock. The fact was, that from the moment of returning to find Figtree Court unoccupied, all hope of hearing of John had faded out of his mind. He felt that there was some mystery involved in the disappearance of his friend—some treachery toward himself, or toward John.

The postman brought no letter from John Watson that morning, and the person who had knocked at the door of the chambers did not return between seven and nine o'clock, so Sherlock Holmes left Figtree Court once more in search of his friend. This time he told the cabman to drive to the Euston Station, and in twenty minutes he was on the platform, making inquiries about the trains.

The Liverpool express had started half an hour before he reached the station, and he had to wait an hour and a quarter for a slow train to take him to his destination.

Holmes chafed cruelly at this delay, and cursed himself for his extended sleep. Half a dozen vessels might sail for India while he roamed up and down the long platform, tumbling over trucks and porters, and swearing at his ill-luck.

He bought the Times newspaper, and looked instinctively at the second column, with a morbid interest in the advertisements of people missing—sons, brothers, and husbands who had left their homes, never to return or to be heard of more.

There was one advertisement of a young man found drowned somewhere on the Lambeth shore.

What if that should have been John's fate? Sherlock shuddered, and put the thought from his mind.

It was five o'clock in the afternoon when Sherlock finally got into Liverpool; he quickly set about to make inquiries as to what vessel had sailed for India within the last two days.

Holmes met with every civility from the clerk to whom he applied. The young man referred to his books, and running his pen down the list of passengers who had sailed, told Sherlock that there was no one among them of the name of Watson. He pushed his inquiries further. Had any of the passengers entered their names within a short time of the vessel's sailing?

One of the other clerks looked up from his desk as Sherlock asked this question. Yes, he said; he remembered a young man's coming into the office at half-past three o'clock in the afternoon, and paying his passage money. His name was the last on the list—Thomas Brown.

Sherlock Holmes shrugged his shoulders. There could have been no possible reason for John's taking a feigned name. He asked the clerk who had last spoken if he could remember the appearance of this Mr. Thomas Brown.

No; the office was crowded at the time; people were running in and out, and he had not taken any particular notice of this last passenger.

Sherlock thanked them for their civility, and wished them good-afternoon. As he was leaving the office, one of the young men called after him:

"Oh, by-the-by, sir," he said, "I remember one thing about this Mr. Thomas Brown—his arm was in a sling."

There was nothing more for Sherlock Holmes to do but to return to town. He re-entered his chambers at ten o'clock that evening, thoroughly worn out once more with his useless search.

Mrs. Hudson brought him his dinner and a pint of wine from a tavern in the Strand. The evening was raw and chilly, and the housekeeper had lighted a good fire in the sitting-room grate.

After eating about half a mutton-chop, Sherlock sat with his wine untasted upon the table before him, smoking cigars and staring into the blaze.

"John Watson never sailed for India," he said, after long and painful reflection. "If he is alive, he is still in England. If he is dead, his body is hidden in some corner of England. If he is not dead, but hiding – he is hiding from me."

He sat for hours smoking and thinking—trouble and gloomy thoughts leaving a dark shadow upon his moody face, which neither the brilliant light of the gas nor the red blaze of the fire could dispel.

Very late in the evening he rose from his chair, pushed away the table, wheeled his desk over to the fire-place, took out a sheet of fools-cap, and dipped a pen in the ink.

But after doing this he paused, leaned his forehead upon his hand, and once more relapsed into thought.

"I shall draw up a record of all that has occurred between our going down to Essex and tonight, beginning at the very beginning."

He drew up this record in short, detached sentences, which he numbered as he wrote.

It ran thus:

_"Journal of Facts connected with the Disappearance of John Watson, inclusive of Facts which have no apparent Relation to that Circumstance."_

He sat for some time looking at his title, and with the tip of his pen in his mouth. "Upon my word," he said, "I begin to think that I ought to pursue this type of inquiry as a profession."

He smoked half a cigar before he had got his thoughts in proper train, and then began to write:

_1\. I write to Molly, proposing to take John down to the Court._

_2\. Molly writes, objecting to the visit, on the part of Lady Stamford._

_3\. We go to Essex in spite of that objection. I see my lady. My lady refuses to be introduced to John on that particular evening on the score of fatigue._

_4\. Sir Michael invites John and me to dinner for the following evening._

_5\. My lady receives a telegraphic dispatch the next morning which summons her to London._

_6\. Molly shows me a letter from my lady, in which she requests to be told when I and my friend, Mr. Watson, mean to leave Essex. To this letter is subjoined a postscript, reiterating the above request._

_7\. We call at the Court, and ask to see the house._

_8\. My lady’s maid objects to our entering her rooms, but Molly prevails, and we find her portrait._

_9\. John’s conduct is exceedingly strange for the rest of the evening, for reasons uncertain, but probably on account of private actions of my own._

_10\. John quite himself again the following morning, and proposes remaining at Stamford till the evening._

_11\. We go out fishing. John leaves me to go to the Court._

_12\. The last positive information I can obtain of him is at the Court, where the servant says he thinks Mr. Watson told him he would go and look for my lady in the grounds._

_13\. I receive information about him at the station which may or may not be correct._

When Sherlock Holmes had completed this brief record, he sat for a long time contemplating the written page.

At last he read it carefully over, stopping at some of the numbered paragraphs, and marking some of them with a pencil cross; then he folded the sheet of foolscap, went over to a cabinet on the opposite side of the room, unlocked it, and placed the paper in that very pigeon-hole into which he had thrust Molly's letter—the pigeon-hole marked Important.

Having done this, he returned to his easy-chair by the fire, pushed away his desk, and lighted a cigar. "The clue to the mystery must be found either at Stamford or London,” he said to himself. “Be it how it may, my mind is made up. I shall first go to Stamford Court, and look for John Watson in a narrow radius. If he’s running from me, I won’t pursue him further, but he can at least tell me to my face."

* * * * *

"Mr. John Watson.—Any person who has met this gentleman since the 7th inst., or who possesses any information respecting him subsequent to that date, will be liberally rewarded on communicating with S.H., 14 Chancery Lane."

Sir Michael Stamford read the above advertisement in the second column of the Times, as he sat at breakfast with my lady and Molly two or three days after Sherlock's return to town.

"Sherlock's friend has not yet been heard of, then," said the baronet, after reading the advertisement to his wife and daughter.

"As for that," replied my lady, "I cannot help wondering that anyone can be silly enough to advertise for him. The young man was evidently of a restless, roving disposition, whom no attraction could ever keep in one spot."

Though the advertisement appeared three successive times, the party at the Court attached very little importance to Mr. Watson' disappearance; and after this one occasion his name was never again mentioned by either Sir Michael, my lady, or Molly.

Molly Stamford and her pretty stepmother were by no means any better friends after that quiet evening on which the young barrister had dined at the Court.

"She is a vain, frivolous, heartless little coquette," said Molly, addressing herself to her Newfoundland dog Caesar, who was the sole recipient of the young lady's confidences; "she is a practiced and consummate flirt, Caesar; and not contented with setting her yellow ringlets and her silly giggle at half the men in Essex, she must needs make that stupid Holmes of mine dance attendance upon her. I haven't common patience with her."

In proof of which last assertion Miss Molly Stamford treated her stepmother with such very palpable impertinence that Sir Michael felt himself called upon to remonstrate with his only daughter.

"The poor little woman is very sensitive, you know, Molly," the baronet said, gravely, "and she feels your conduct most acutely."

"I don't believe it a bit, papa," answered Molly, stoutly. "You think her sensitive because she has soft little white hands, and big blue eyes with long lashes, and all manner of affected, fantastical ways, which you stupid men call fascinating. Sensitive! Why, I've seen her do cruel things with those slender white fingers, and laugh at the pain she inflicted. I'm very sorry, papa," she added, softened a little by her father's look of distress; "though she has come between us, and robbed poor Molly of the love of that dear, generous heart, I wish I could like her for your sake; but I can't, I can't, and no more can Caesar. She came up to him once with her red lips apart, and her little white teeth glistening between them, and stroked his great head with her soft hand; but if I had not had hold of his collar, he would have flown at her throat. She may bewitch every man in Essex, but she'd never make friends with my dog."

"Your dog shall be shot," answered Sir Michael angrily, "if his vicious temper ever endangers Mary."

The Newfoundland rolled his eyes slowly round in the direction of the speaker, as if he understood every word that had been said. Lady Stamford happened to enter the room at this very moment, and the animal cowered down by the side of his mistress with a suppressed growl. There was something in the manner of the dog which was, if anything, more indicative of terror than of fury; incredible as it appears that Caesar should be frightened by so fragile a creature as Mary Stamford.

Amicable as was my lady's nature, she could not live long at the Court without discovering Molly's dislike to her. She never alluded to it but once; then, shrugging her graceful white shoulders, she said, with a sigh:

"It seems very hard that you cannot love me, Molly, for I have never been used to make enemies; but since it seems that it must be so, I cannot help it. If we cannot be friends, let us be neutral. You won't try to injure me?"

"Injure you!" exclaimed Molly; "how should I injure you?"

"You'll not try to deprive me of your father's affection?"

"I may not be as amiable as you are, my lady, and I may not have the same sweet smiles and pretty words for every stranger I meet, but I am not capable of a contemptible meanness; and even if I were, I think you are so secure of my father's love, that nothing but your own act will ever deprive you of it."

"What a severe creature you are, Molly!" said my lady, making a little grimace. "I suppose you mean to infer by all that, that I'm deceitful. Why, I can't help smiling at people, and speaking prettily to them. I know I'm no better than the rest of the world; but I can't help it if I'm pleasanter. It's constitutional."

Molly having thus entirely shut the door upon all intimacy between Lady Stamford and herself, and Sir Michael being chiefly occupied in agricultural pursuits and manly sports, which kept him away from home, it was perhaps natural that my lady, being of an eminently social disposition, should find herself thrown a good deal upon her voluptuous maid for society.

Jeannine Marks was exactly the sort of a girl who is generally promoted from the post of lady's maid to that of companion. She had just sufficient education to enable her to understand her mistress when Mary chose to allow herself to run riot in a species of intellectual tarantella, in which her tongue went mad to the sound of its own rattle, as the Spanish dancer at the noise of his castanets. Jeannine knew enough of the French language to be able to dip into the yellow-paper-covered novels which my lady ordered from the Burlington Arcade, and to discourse with her mistress upon the questionable subjects of these romances. She learned very swiftly.

Sharp October winds were sweeping the leaves from the limes in the long avenue, and driving them in withered heaps with a ghostly rustling noise along the dry gravel walks. The old well must have been half choked up with the leaves that drifted about it, and whirled in eddying circles into its black, broken mouth. On the still bosom of the fish-pond the same withered leaves slowly rotted away, mixing themselves with the tangled weeds that discolored the surface of the water. All the gardeners Sir Michael could employ could not keep the impress of autumn's destroying hand from the grounds about the Court.

"How I hate this desolate month!" my lady said, as she walked about the garden, shivering beneath her sable mantle. "Everything dropping to ruin and decay, and the cold flicker of the sun lighting up the ugliness of the earth, as the glare of gas-lamps lights the wrinkles of an old woman. Shall I ever grow old, Jeannine? Will my hair ever drop off as the leaves are falling from those trees, and leave me wan and bare like them? Will I lose my wits, and wander vacantly without a keeper to mind me? What is to become of me when I grow old?"

She shivered at the thought of this more than she had done at the cold, wintry breeze, and muffling herself closely in her fur, walked so fast that her maid had some difficulty in keeping up with her.

"Do you remember, Jeannine," she said, presently, relaxing her pace, "do you remember that French story we read—the story of a beautiful woman who had committed some crime—I forget what—in the zenith of her power and loveliness, when all Paris drank to her every night, and when the people ran away from the carriage of the king to flock about hers, and get a peep at her face? Do you remember how she kept the secret of what she had done for nearly half a century, spending her old age in her family chateau, beloved and honored by all the province as an uncanonized saint and benefactress to the poor; and how, when her hair was white, and her eyes almost blind with age, the secret was revealed through one of those strange accidents by which such secrets always are revealed in romances, and she was tried, found guilty, and condemned to be burned alive? The king who had worn her colors was dead and gone; the court of which she had been a star had passed away; powerful functionaries and great magistrates, who might perhaps have helped her, were moldering in the graves; brave young cavaliers, who would have died for her, had fallen upon distant battle-fields; she had lived to see the age to which she had belonged fade like a dream; and she went to the stake, followed by only a few ignorant country people, who forgot all her bounties, and hooted at her for a wicked sorceress."

"I don't care for such dismal stories, my lady," said Jeannine Marks with a shudder. "One has no need to read books to give one the horrors in this dull place."

Lady Stamford shrugged her shoulders and laughed at her maid's candor.

"It is a dull place, Jeannine," she said, taking her arm, "though it doesn't do to say so to my husband. Though I am the wife of one of the most influential men in the county, I don't know that we weren’t happier together, you and I, at Mr. Dawson's; and yet it's something to wear sables that cost sixty guineas, and have a thousand pounds spent on the decoration of one's apartments."

Treated as a companion by her mistress, in the receipt of the most liberal wages, and with certain other advantages such as perhaps lady's maid never had before, it was strange that Jeannine Marks should wish to leave her situation; but it was not the less a fact that she was anxious to exchange all the advantages of Stamford Court for the very unpromising prospect which awaited her as the wife of her cousin Charlie.

The young man had contrived in some manner to associate himself with the improved fortunes of his sweetheart. He had never allowed Jeannine any peace till she had obtained for him, by the aid of my lady's interference, a situation as undergroom of the Court.

He never rode out with either Molly or Sir Michael; but on one of the few occasions upon which my lady mounted the pretty little gray thoroughbred reserved for her use, he contrived to attend her in her ride. He saw enough, in the very first half hour they were out, to discover that, graceful as Mary Stamford might look in her long blue cloth habit, she was a timid horsewoman, and utterly unable to manage the animal she rode.

Lady Stamford remonstrated with her maid upon her folly in wishing to marry the uncouth groom.

The two women were seated together over the fire in my lady's dressing-room. The gray sky was closing in upon the October afternoon, and the black tracery of ivy darkening the casement windows.

"You surely are not in love with the awkward, ugly creature are you, Jeannine?" asked my lady softly.

The girl was sitting on a low stool at her mistress’s feet; my lady was idly stroking her fine hair, and tracing her lovely features with a single fingertip. She did not answer my lady's question immediately, but sat for some time looking vacantly into the red abyss in the hollow fire.

Presently she said, rather as if she had been thinking aloud than answering Mary's question:

"I don't think I can love him. We have been together from children, and I promised, when I was little better than fifteen, that I'd be his wife. I daren't break that promise now. There have been times when I've made up the very sentence I meant to say to him, telling him that I couldn't keep my faith with him; but the words have died upon my lips, and I've sat looking at him, with a choking sensation, in my throat that wouldn't let me speak. I daren't refuse to marry him. I've often watched and watched him, as he has sat slicing away at a hedge-stake with his great clasp-knife, till I have thought that it is just such men as he who have decoyed their sweethearts into lonely places, and murdered them for being false to their word. When he was a boy he was always violent and revengeful. I saw him once take up that very knife in a quarrel with his mother. I tell you, my lady, I must marry him."

"You silly girl, you shall do nothing of the kind!" answered Mary, pulling away abruptly. "You think he'll murder you, do you? Do you think, then, if murder is in him, you would be any safer as his wife? If you thwarted him, or made him jealous; if he wanted to marry another woman, or to get hold of some poor, pitiful bit of money of yours, couldn't he murder you then? I tell you you sha'n't marry him, Jeannine. In the first place I hate the man; and, in the next place I can't afford to part with you. We'll give him a few pounds and send him about his business."

Jeannine Marks caught my lady's hand in hers, and clasped them convulsively to her bosom.

"My lady—my good, kind mistress!" she cried, vehemently, "don't try to thwart me in this—don't ask me to thwart him. I tell you I must marry him. You don't know what he is. It will be my ruin, and the ruin of others, if I break my word. I must marry him!"

"Very well, then, Jeannine," answered her mistress, "I can't oppose you. There must be some secret at the bottom of all this."

"There is, my lady," said the girl, with her face turned away from Mary.

"I shall be very sorry to lose you; you have become very dear to me, and our intimacy is not usual between a lady and her maid. I have promised to stand your friend in all things, and I meant it. What does your cousin plan to do for a living when, you are married?"

"He would like to take a public house."

"Then he shall take a public house, and the sooner he drinks himself to death the better,” my lady said coldly. “Sir Michael dines at a bachelor's party at Major Margrave's this evening, and my step-daughter is away with her friends at the Grange. You can bring your cousin into the drawing-room after dinner, and I'll tell him what I mean to do for him. Afterwards, we shall send him away, and be alone together, just you and I."

"You are very good, my lady," Jeannine answered with a sigh.

Lady Stamford sat in the glow of firelight and wax candles in the luxurious drawing-room; the amber damask cushions of the sofa contrasting with her dark violet velvet dress, and her rippling hair falling about her neck in a golden haze. Everywhere around her were the evidences of wealth and splendor; while in strange contrast to all this, and to her own beauty; the awkward groom stood rubbing his bullet head as my lady explained to him what she intended to do for her confidential maid. Mary's promises were very liberal, and she had expected that, uncouth as the man was, he would, in his own rough manner, have expressed his gratitude.

To her surprise he stood staring at the floor without uttering a word in answer to her offer. Jeannine was standing close to his elbow, and seemed distressed at the man's rudeness.

"Tell my lady how thankful you are, Charlie," she said.

"But I'm not so over and above thankful," answered her lover, savagely. "Fifty pound ain't much to start a public. You'll make it a hundred, my lady?"

"I shall do nothing of the kind," said Lady Stamford, her clear blue eyes flashing with indignation, "and I wonder at your impertinence in asking it."

"Oh, yes, you will, though," answered Charlie, with quiet insolence that had a hidden meaning. "You'll make it a hundred, my lady."

Lady Stamford rose from her seat, looked the man steadfastly in the face till his determined gaze sunk under hers; then walking straight up to her maid, she said in a high, piercing voice, peculiar to her in moments of intense agitation:

"Jeannine Marks, you have told _this man_!"

The girl fell on her knees at my lady's feet.

"Oh, forgive me, forgive me!" she cried. "He forced it from me, or I would never, never have told!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Sunday Summer Serial: thanks to redscudery for the brilliant idea!
> 
> Thursday Teasers posted on my Tumblr (http://doctornerdington.tumblr.com).
> 
> Feedback appreciated.
> 
> Next week: On the Watch.


	5. On the Watch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a posthumous collaboration with Mary Elizabeth Braddon; I've adapted her novel Lady Audley's Secret, and retained much of her original structure and language. ALL CREDIT TO HER.
> 
> Current rating: mature.
> 
> Braddon's novel was originally published serially, as this adaptation is. Chapter updates every Sunday throughout the summer.

One morning late in November, with the yellow fog low upon the flat meadows, and the blinded cattle groping their way through the dim obscurity; with the village church looming brown and dingy through the uncertain light, Jeannine Marks and her cousin Charlie made their way through the churchyard of Stamford. They presented themselves before a shivering curate, whose surplice hung in damp folds, soddened by the morning mist, and whose temper was not improved by his having waited five minutes for the bride and bridegroom. 

Charlie Milverton, dressed in his ill-fitting Sunday clothes, looked by no means handsomer than in his every-day apparel; but Jeannine, arrayed in a rustling silk of delicate green that had been worn not half a dozen times by her mistress, looked, as the few spectators of the ceremony remarked, "quite the lady." 

Mr. Charlie Milverton, the hero of the occasion, thought very little of all this. He had secured the wife of his choice, and the object of his life-long ambition—a public house. My lady had provided the seventy-five pounds necessary for the purchase of the good-will and fixtures, with the stock of ales and spirits, of a small inn in the center of the village, called the Castle Inn. It was not a very pretty house to look at; it had something of a tumble-down, weather-beaten appearance. The wind had had its own way with the Castle Inn, and had sometimes made cruel use of its power. It was the wind that battered and bent the low, thatched roofs of outhouses and stables, till they hung over and lurched forward, as a slouched hat hangs over the low forehead of some village ruffian; it was the wind that shook and rattled the wooden shutters before the narrow casements, till they hung broken and dilapidated upon their rusty hinges; it was the wind that made light of any little bit of wooden trellis-work, or creeping plant, or tiny balcony, or any modest decoration whatsoever, and tore and scattered it in its scornful fury. The dispirited proprietor grew tired of his long struggle with this mighty enemy; so the wind was left to work its own will, and the Castle Inn fell slowly to decay. 

But for all that it suffered without, it was not the less prosperous within doors. Sturdy drovers stopped to drink at the little bar; well-to-do farmers spent their evenings and talked politics in the low, wainscoted parlor, while their horses munched some suspicious mixture of moldy hay and tolerable beans in the tumble-down stables. Sometimes even the members of the Stamford hunt stopped to drink and bait their horses at the Castle Inn; while, on one grand and never-to-be-forgotten occasion, a dinner had been ordered by the master of the hounds for some thirty gentlemen, and the proprietor driven nearly mad by the importance of the demand. 

So Charlie Milverton, who was by no means troubled with an eye for the beautiful, thought himself very fortunate in becoming the landlord of the Castle Inn, Stamford. 

A chaise-cart was waiting in the fog to convey the bride and bridegroom to their new home; and a few of the villagers, who had known Jeannine from a child, were lingering around the churchyard gate to bid her good wishes. Her dark eyes were still darker from the tears she had shed, and the red rims which surrounded them. The bridegroom was annoyed at this exhibition of emotion. 

"What are you crying for?" he said, fiercely. "If you didn't want to marry me you should have told me so. I ain't going to murder you, am I?" 

The lady's maid shivered as he spoke to her, and dragged her little silk mantle closely around her. 

"You're cold in all this here finery," said Charlie, staring at her costly dress with no expression of good-will. "Why can't women dress according to their station? You won't have silk gowns out of my pocket, I can tell you." 

He lifted the shivering girl into the chaise, wrapped a rough great-coat about her, and drove off through the yellow fog, followed by a feeble cheer from two or three urchins clustered around the gate. 

A new maid was brought from London to replace Jeannine Marks about the person of my lady—a very showy damsel, who wore a black satin gown, and rose-colored ribbons in her cap, and complained bitterly of the dullness of Stamford Court. 

But Christmas brought visitors to the rambling old mansion. A country squire and his plump wife occupied the tapestried chamber; merry girls scampered up and down the long passages, and young men stared out of the latticed windows, watching for southerly winds and cloudy skies; there was not an empty stall in the roomy old stables. 

Among other visitors, Mr. Sherlock Holmes came down to Essex for the hunting season, with half a dozen scientific pamphlets, a case of cigars, and three pounds of Turkish tobacco among other pharmacological essentials in his portmanteau. 

The honest young country squires, who talked all breakfast time of Flying Dutchman fillies and Voltigeur colts, wanted nothing to do with the quiet and serious young barrister, and indeed made rather merry over his scientific conversation and complete ignorance of all things equine. Holmes simply shrugged, and dawdled with his books over a slice of bread and marmalade. It was often convenient, he thought to himself, to be seen as a person utterly unworthy of any attention whatsoever – particularly when one wished to observe without being seen to be doing so. 

The young barrister had brought a couple of dogs with him; and the country gentleman laughed aloud at the two miserable curs, one of which had followed Sherlock Holmes through Chancery Lane, and half the length of Holborn; while his companion had been taken by the barrister vi et armis from a coster-monger who was ill-using him. And as Sherlock furthermore insisted on having these two deplorable animals under his easy-chair in the drawing-room, much to the annoyance of my lady, who, as we know, hated all dogs, the visitors at Stamford Court looked upon the baronet's young friend as an inoffensive species of maniac. 

During other visits to the Court, Sherlock Holmes had made a feeble show of joining in the sports of the merry assembly. But this year he showed no inclination for any of these outdoor amusements, and he spent his time entirely in lounging in the drawing-room, and making himself agreeable to my lady and Molly. 

Lady Stamford received his attentions in that graceful half-childish fashion which her admirers found so charming; but Molly was indignant at the change in Sherlock's conduct. 

"You were always a poor, spiritless fellow, Sherlock," said the young lady, contemptuously, as she bounced into the drawing-room in her riding-habit, after a hunting breakfast, from which Sherlock had absented himself, preferring a cup of tea in my lady's boudoir; "but this year I don't know what has come over you. You are good for nothing but to hold a skein of silk or read Tennyson to Lady Stamford." 

"My dear, hasty, impetuous Molly, don't be violent," said the young man imploringly. "Lady Stamford interests me, and Sir Michael’s county friends do not. Is that a sufficient answer, Molly?" 

Miss Stamford gave her head a scornful toss. 

"It's as good an answer as I shall ever get from, you, Sherlock," she said, impatiently; "but pray amuse yourself in your own way; loll in an easy-chair all day, with those two absurd dogs asleep on your knees; spoil my lady's window-curtains with your cigars and annoy everybody in the house with your stupid, inanimate countenance." 

Mr. Sherlock Holmes opened his handsome eyes to their widest extent at this tirade, and looked at Miss Molly in utter surprise. 

The young lady was walking up and down the room, slashing the skirt of her habit with her riding-whip. Her eyes sparkled with an angry flash, and a crimson glow burned under her sun-kissed skin. The young barrister knew very well, by these diagnostics, that she was in a passion. 

"Yes," she repeated, "your stupid, inanimate countenance. Do you know, Sherlock Holmes, that with all your mock amiability, you are brimful of conceit and superciliousness. You look down upon our amusements; you lift up your eyebrows, and shrug your shoulders, and throw yourself back in your chair, and wash your hands of us and our pleasures. You are a selfish, cold-hearted—" 

"Molly! Good—gracious—me!" 

The morning paper dropped out of his hands, and he sat staring at his assailant, dumbfounded. 

"Yes, selfish, Sherlock Holmes! You take home half-starved dogs, because you like half-starved dogs. You stoop down, and pat the head of every good-for-nothing cur in the village street, because you like good-for-nothing curs. You notice little children, and give them halfpence, because it amuses you to do so. But you lift your eyebrows a quarter of a yard when poor Sir Gregory Lestrade tells a stupid story, and stare the poor fellow out of countenance with your lazy insolence. Sir Gregory is worth twenty of you, though he did write to ask if my m-a-i-r had recovered from her sprain. He can't spell, or lift his eyebrows to the roots of his hair; but he would go through fire and water for the girl he loves; while you—" 

At this very point, when Sherlock was most prepared to encounter his young friend’s wrath, and when Miss Molly seemed about to make her strongest attack, the young lady broke down altogether, and dissolved into tears. 

Sherlock sprang from his easy-chair, upsetting his dogs on the carpet. 

"Molly, my dear,” he exclaimed awkwardly, “what is it?" 

"It's—it's—it's the feather of my hat that got into my eyes," she whispered; and before he could investigate the truth of this assertion Molly had darted out of the room. 

Sherlock Holmes was preparing to follow her, when he heard her voice in the court-yard below, amidst the tramping of horses and the clamor of visitors, dogs, and grooms. Sir Gregory Lestrade, the most aristocratic young sportsman in the neighborhood, had just taken her little foot in his hand as she sprung into her saddle. 

"Good Heaven!" exclaimed Sherlock, as he watched the party of equestrians until they disappeared under the archway. "What does all this mean? She’s a clever girl, truly, but to fly at a fellow like that, without the least provocation!” 

With such reflections as these did Mr. Sherlock Holmes beguile the time until my lady re-entered the drawing-room, fresh and radiant in her elegant morning costume, her yellow curls glistening with the perfumed waters in which she had bathed, and her velvet-covered sketch-book in her arms. She planted a little easel upon a table by the window, seated herself before it, and began to mix the colors upon her palette, Sherlock watching her out of his half-closed eyes. 

"You are sure my cigar does not annoy you, Lady Stamford?" 

"Oh, no indeed; I am quite used to the smell of tobacco. Mr. Dawson, the surgeon, smoked all the evening when I lived in his house." 

"Dawson is a good fellow, isn't he?" Sherlock asked, carelessly. 

My lady burst into her pretty, gushing laugh. 

"The dearest of good creatures," she said. "He paid me five-and-twenty pounds a year—only fancy, five-and-twenty pounds! That made six pounds five a quarter. How well I remember receiving the money—six dingy old sovereigns, and a little heap of untidy, dirty silver that came straight from the till in the surgery! And then how glad I was to get it! While now—I can't help laughing while I think of it—these colors I am using cost a guinea each at Winsor & Newton's—the carmine and ultramarine thirty shillings. I gave Mrs. Dawson one of my silk dresses the other day, and the poor thing kissed me, and the surgeon carried the bundle home under his cloak." 

My lady laughed long and joyously at the thought. Her colors were mixed; she was copying a water-colored sketch of an impossibly Turneresque atmosphere. The sketch was nearly finished, and she had only to put in some critical little touches with the most delicate of her sable pencils. She prepared herself daintily for the work, looking sideways at the painting. 

All this time Mr. Sherlock Holmes's eyes were fixed intently on her pretty face. 

"It is a change," he said, after so long a pause that my lady might have forgotten what she had been talking of, "it is a change! Some women would do a great deal to accomplish such a change as that." 

Lady Stamford's clear blue eyes dilated as she fixed them suddenly on the young barrister. The wintry sunlight, gleaming full upon her face from a side window, lit up the azure of those beautiful eyes, till their color seemed to flicker and tremble betwixt blue and green, as the opal tints of the sea change upon a summer's day. The small brush fell from her hand, and blotted out the peasant's face under a widening circle of crimson lake. 

Sherlock Holmes was tenderly coaxing the crumbled leaf of his cigar with cautious fingers. 

"My friend at the corner of Chancery Lane has not given me such good Manillas as usual," he murmured. "If ever you smoke, my lady (and I am told that many women take a quiet weed under the rose), be very careful how you choose your cigars." 

My lady drew a long breath, picked up her brush, and laughed aloud at Sherlock's advice. 

"What an eccentric creature you are, Mr. Holmes. Do you know that you sometimes puzzle me?" 

"Not more than you puzzle me, I am sure." 

My lady put away her colors and sketch book, and seating herself in the deep recess of another window, at a considerable distance from Sherlock Holmes, settled to a large piece of Berlin-wool work embroidery. 

Seated in the embrasure of this window, my lady was separated from Sherlock Holmes by the whole length of the room, and the young man could only catch an occasional glimpse of her fair face, surrounded by its bright aureole of hazy, golden hair. 

Sherlock Holmes had been a week at the Court, but as yet neither he nor my lady had mentioned the name of John Watson. 

This morning, however, after exhausting the usual topics of conversation, Lady Stamford made a stilted inquiry about Sherlock’s friend; "That Mr. John—John—" she said, hesitating. 

"Watson," suggested Sherlock. 

"Yes, to be sure—Mr. John Watson. By all accounts, a very singular person. Have you seen him lately?" 

"I have not seen him since the 7th of September last—the day upon which he left me asleep in the meadows on the other side of the village." 

"Dear me!" exclaimed my lady, "what a very strange young man this Mr. John Watson must be! Pray tell me all about it." 

Sherlock told, in a few words, of his visits to various docks, and to Portsmouth, and their unsatisfactory results, my lady listening very attentively. 

In order to tell this story to better advantage, the young man left his chair, and, crossing the room, took up his place opposite to Lady Stamford, in the embrasure of the window. 

"And what do you infer from all this?" asked my lady, after a pause. 

"It is so great a mystery to me," he answered deliberately, "that I scarcely dare to draw any conclusion whatever; but in the obscurity I think I can grope my way to two suppositions, which to me seem almost certainties." 

"And they are—" 

"First, that John Watson never went beyond London. Second, that he never went to London at all." 

"Good gracious me!" cried my lady, piteously. "What do you mean by all this?" 

"Lady Stamford," answered the young man, gravely, "did you ever study the theory of circumstantial evidence?" 

"How can you ask a poor woman about such horrid things?" exclaimed my lady. 

"Circumstantial evidence," continued the young man, as if he scarcely heard Lady Stamford's interruption—"is that wonderful fabric which is built out of straws collected at every point of the compass, and which is yet strong enough to hang a man. Upon what infinitesimal trifles may sometimes hang the whole secret of some wicked mystery, inexplicable heretofore to the wisest upon the earth! A scrap of paper, a shred of some torn garment, the button off a coat, a word dropped incautiously from the overcautious lips of guilt, the fragment of a letter, the shutting or opening of a door, a shadow on a window-blind—a thousand circumstances so slight as to be forgotten by the criminal, but links of iron in the wonderful chain forged by the science of the detective; and lo! the gallows is built up; the solemn bell tolls through the dismal gray of the early morning, the drop creaks under the guilty feet, and the penalty of crime is paid." 

Faint shadows of green and crimson fell upon my lady's face from the painted escutcheons in the mullioned window by which she sat; but every trace of the natural color of that face had faded out, leaving it a ghastly ashen gray. 

Sitting quietly in her chair, her head fallen back upon the amber damask cushions, and her little hands lying powerless in her lap, Lady Stamford had fainted away. 

"The radius grows narrower day by day," said Sherlock Holmes. "John Watson never reached London." 

* * * * *

The Christmas week was over, and one by one the country visitors dropped away from Stamford Court. Sir Michael was in request everywhere. Shaking hands with the young sportsmen; kissing the rosy-cheeked girls goodbye; sometimes even embracing portly matrons who came to thank him for their pleasant visit; everywhere genial, hospitable, generous, happy, and beloved, the baronet hurried from room to room, from the hall to the stables, from the stables to the court-yard, from the court-yard to the arched gateway to speed the parting guest. 

My lady's yellow curls flashed hither and thither like wandering gleams of sunshine on these busy days of farewell. Her great blue eyes had a pretty, mournful look, in charming unison with the soft pressure of her little hand, and that friendly, though perhaps rather stereotyped speech, in which she told her visitors how she was so sorry to lose them, and how she didn't know what she should do till they came once more to enliven the court by their charming society. 

But however sorry my lady might be to lose her visitors, there was at least one guest whose society she was not deprived of. Sherlock Holmes showed no intention of leaving. He had no professional duties, he said; Figtree Court was delightfully shady in hot weather, but there was a sharp corner round which the wind came in the summer months, armed with avenging rheumatisms and influenzas. Everybody was so good to him at the Court, that really he had no inclination to hurry away. 

Sir Michael had but one answer to this: "Stay, my dear boy; stay, my dear Sherlock, as long as ever you like. I have no son, and you stand to me in the place of one. Make yourself agreeable to Mary, and make the Court your home as long as you live." 

To which Sherlock merely replied by grasping his hand vehemently, and muttering something about "a kind old prince." 

It was to be observed that there was sometimes a certain vague sadness in the young man's tone, some shadow of affectionate regret that brought a mist into Sherlock's eyes, as he sat in a corner of the room looking thoughtfully at the baronet. 

Before the last of the young sportsmen departed, Sir Gregory Lestrade requested and obtained an interview with Miss Molly Stamford in the oak library—an interview in which considerable emotion was displayed by the stalwart young fox-hunter; so much emotion, indeed, and of such a genuine and honest character, that Molly fairly broke down as she told him she should forever esteem and respect him for his true and noble heart, but that he must never, never, unless he wished to cause her the most cruel distress, ask more from her than this esteem and respect. 

Sir Gregory left the library by the French window opening into the pond-garden. He strolled into that very lime-walk which John Watson had compared to an avenue in a churchyard, and under the leafless trees fought the battle of his brave young heart. 

"What a fool I am to feel it like this!" he muttered to himself. "I always knew it would be so; I always knew that she was a hundred times too good for me. God bless her! How nobly and tenderly she spoke; how beautiful she looked with the crimson blushes, and the tears in her eyes. I can get over anything as long as she doesn't care for that sneaking lawyer. But I couldn't stand that." 

That sneaking lawyer, by which appellation Sir Gregory alluded to Mr. Sherlock Holmes, was standing in the hall, looking at a map of the midland counties, when Molly came out of the library, with red eyes, after her interview with the fox-hunting baronet. 

Sherlock had his eyes within half an inch of the surface of the map as the young lady approached him. 

"Yes," he said, "Wroxham is in Norfolk, and that fool, young Vincent, said it was in Herefordshire. Ha, Molly, is that you?" 

He turned round so as to intercept Miss Stamford on her way to the staircase. 

"Yes," she replied curtly, trying to pass him. 

"Molly, you have been crying." 

The young lady did not condescend to reply. 

"You have been crying, Molly. Sir Gregory has been making you an offer of his hand, eh?" 

"Have you been listening at the door, Mr. Holmes?" 

"I have not; but I am able to draw a conclusion by induction. Do you know what inductive evidence is, Miss Stamford?" 

"No," replied Molly, looking at him as a handsome young panther might look at its daring tormentor. 

"I thought not. I dare say Sir Gregory would ask if it was a new kind of horse-ball. I knew by induction that the baronet was going to make you an offer; first, because he came downstairs with his hair parted on the wrong side, and his face as pale as a tablecloth; secondly, because he couldn't eat any breakfast, and let his coffee go cold; and, thirdly, because he asked for an interview with you before he left the Court. Well, how's it to be, Molly? Do we marry the baronet, and is Sherlock to be the best man at the wedding?" 

"Sir Gregory Lestrade is a noble-hearted young man," said Molly, still trying to pass. 

"But do we accept him—yes or no? Are we to be Lady Lestrade, with a superb estate in Hertfordshire, summer quarters for our hunters, and a drag with outriders to drive us across to papa's place in Essex? Is it to be so, Molly, or not?" 

"What is that to you, Sherlock?" cried Molly, passionately. "What do you care what becomes of me, or whom I marry? If I married a chimney-sweep you'd only lift up your eyebrows and say, 'Bless my soul, she was always eccentric.' I have refused Sir Gregory Lestrade; but when I think of his generous and unselfish affection, and compare it with the heartless, lazy, selfish, supercilious indifference of other men, I've a good mind to run after him and tell him—" 

"That you'll retract, and be Lady Lestrade?" 

"Yes." 

Sherlock sighed. "Don't, Molly, don't say that," he said, grasping her slender little wrist, and leading her up-stairs. "Come into the drawing-room with me, my alarming little friend. Sit down here in this mullioned window, and let us talk seriously and leave off quarreling if we can." 

The two had the drawing-room all to themselves. Sir Michael was out, my lady in her own apartments, and poor Sir Gregory Lestrade walking up and down upon the gravel walk, darkened with the flickering shadows of the leafless branches in the cold winter sunshine. 

"My poor little Molly," said Sherlock, with a strange sort of tenderness. "Life is such a very troublesome matter, when all is said and done." 

Molly opened her eyes to their widest extent, looking him full in the face with a bewildered stare. Sherlock had picked up the ugliest and leanest of his attendant curs, and was placidly stroking the animal's ears. 

"Is this all you have to say to me, Sherlock?" asked Miss Stamford, quietly. 

"Well, yes, I think so," he replied, after considerable deliberation. "I fancy that what I wanted to say was this—don't marry the fox-hunting baronet if you like anybody else better, or if you don’t like him enough. It’s a great blessing to find a heart’s-match – an uncertainty, but a great blessing to be sure, regardless of how the whole affair turns out. You mustn’t throw that chance away." 

"Thank you, Sherlock," said Miss Stamford, crimsoning up to the roots of her waving brown hair.

Sherlock pulled the dog's ears thoughtfully in the silence that followed. 

So poor Sir Gregory Lestrade rode away from Stamford Court, looking very crestfallen and dismal. 

He had very little pleasure in returning to his stately mansion, hidden among sheltering oaks and venerable beeches. The square, red brick house, gleaming at the end of a long arcade of leafless trees was to be forever desolate, he thought, since Molly would not come to be its mistress. 

A hundred improvements planned and thought of were dismissed from his mind as useless now. The hunter that Jim the trainer was breaking in for a lady; the two pointer pups that were being reared for the next shooting season; the big black retriever that would have carried Molly's parasol; the pavilion in the garden, disused since his mother's death, but which he had meant to have restored for Miss Stamford—all these things were now so much vanity and vexation of spirit. 

"What's the good of being rich if one has no one to help spend one's money?" said the young baronet. "One only grows a selfish beggar, and takes to drinking too much port. It's a hard thing that a girl can refuse a true heart and such stables as we've got at the park. It unsettles a man somehow." 

He had been desperately in love with Molly ever since the last hunting season, when he had met her at the county ball. His passion, cherished through the slow monotony of a summer, had broken out afresh in the merry winter months. 

So when Molly said "No," or rather made that pretty speech about esteem and respect, which well-bred young ladies substitute for the obnoxious monosyllable, Sir Gregory Lestrade felt that the whole fabric of the future he had built so complacently was shivered into a heap of dingy ruins. 

Sir Michael grasped him warmly by the hand just before the young man mounted his horse in the court-yard. 

"I'm very sorry, Lestrade," he said. "You're as good a fellow as ever breathed, and would have made my girl an excellent husband; but you know she’s quite taken with our barrister friend, and I think that—" 

"Don't say that, Sir Michael," interrupted the fox-hunter, energetically. "I can get over anything but that. A lazy, rude barrister who turns his collars up, and eats nothing but bread and marmalade! No, no, Sir Michael; it's a queer world, but I can't think that of Miss Stamford. There must be someone in the background, sir; it can't be him." 

Sir Michael shook his head as the rejected suitor rode away. 

"I don't know about that," he muttered. "Sherlock's a good lad, and the girl might do worse; but he hangs back as if he didn't care for her. His affections do not lean her way, I daresay!" 

The old baronet said this in that semi-thoughtful tone with which we speak of other people's affairs. The shadows of the early winter twilight, gathering thickest under the low oak ceiling of the hall, and the quaint curve of the arched doorway, fell darkly round his handsome head; but the light of his declining life, his beautiful and beloved young wife, was near him, and he could see no shadows when she was by. 

She came skipping through the hall to meet him, and, shaking her golden ringlets, buried her bright head on her husband's breast. 

"So the last of our visitors is gone, dear, and we're all alone," she said. "Isn't that nice?" 

"Yes, darling," he answered fondly, stroking her bright hair. 

"Except Mr. Sherlock Holmes. How long is he going to stay here?" 

"As long as he likes, my pet; he's always welcome," said the baronet; and then, as if remembering himself, he added, tenderly: "But not unless his visit is agreeable to you, darling; not if his lazy habits, or his smoking, or his dogs, or anything about him is displeasing to you." 

Lady Stamford pursed up her rosy lips and looked thoughtfully at the ground. 

"It isn't that," she said, hesitatingly. "Mr. Holmes is a very agreeable young man, and a very honorable young man; but you know, Sir Michael, I'm rather a young lady to be mistress to the Court, and—" 

"And what, Mary?" asked the baronet, fiercely. 

"Poor Molly is rather jealous of any attention Mr. Holmes pays me, and—and—I think it would be better for her happiness if he were to bring his visit to a close." 

"He shall go to-night, Mary," exclaimed Sir Michael. "I am a blind, neglectful fool not to have thought of this before. My lovely little darling, it was scarcely just to Sherlock to expose the poor lad to your fascinations. I know him to be as good and true-hearted a fellow as ever breathed, but—but—he shall go tonight." 

"But you won't be too abrupt, dear? You won't be rude?" 

"Rude! No, Mary. I left him smoking in the lime-walk. I'll go and tell him that he must be out of the house in an hour." 

So in that leafless avenue, under whose gloomy shade John Watson had stood on that thunderous evening before the day of his disappearance, Sir Michael Stamford told Sherlock that the Court was no home for him, and that my lady was too young and pretty to accept the attentions of a handsome guest of eight-and-twenty. 

Sherlock only shrugged his shoulders and elevated his dark eyebrows as Sir Michael delicately hinted all this. 

"I have been attentive to my lady," he said. "She interests me;" and then, with a change in his voice, and an emotion not common to him, he turned to the baronet, and grasping his hand, exclaimed, "God forbid that I should ever bring trouble upon such a generous heart as yours! You have been the only family I have known for many years. God forbid that the slightest shadow of dishonor should ever fall upon you—least of all through agency of mine." 

The young man uttered these few words in a broken and disjointed fashion in which Sir Michael had never heard him speak before. 

He left the court that night, but he did not go far. Instead of taking the evening train for London, he went straight up to the village, and walking into the Castle Inn, asked the new bride Jeannine Milverton if he could take apartments. 

* * * * *

As soon as he was alone, accommodated adequately in the best room the Castle Inn could offer, Sherlock threw himself on the bed, burying his head in the pillow. He longed for the sweet oblivion of sleep, but after the events of the day and his conversation with Lady Stamford, his racing mind afforded him not that luxury. He had terrible suspicions of Lady Stamford; terrible suspicions that meant disgrace to Sir Michael and a quiet, endless grief to himself. John Watson’s face danced before his eyes; his cheek warmed with the memory of John’s soft breath upon it. Many weeks had passed since John’s disappearance, but Sherlock had not allowed himself to dwell on his memories of that singular encounter with John, so precious to him now that it seemed it would also be their last. His tongue darted out; he unknowingly traced his lower lip in imitation of John’s kiss. It was a torture, this remembering, and yet, he had no wish for it to end. He thought of the easy tilt of John’s head, the shine in his eyes, the press of his mouth, and the manly scent of him as they stood together in my lady’s chamber. But then, his spiteful mind threw out the coldness in John’s eyes later that night, and the warmth of the memory was lost, as with a shock of cold water. What had John been thinking, all that long and sleepless night? Was he filled with regret? Disgust? Could Holmes even dare to hope, desire? Why did he run? Where was he now, if he was anywhere? Was he dead? What subject, and who, had occupied his final thoughts? Sherlock groaned, at last. “This is intolerable,” he muttered. 

He leapt up, and went to the pile of cases the inn boy had deposited in the corner of his room. He rooted around for his small box of experimental and scientific supplies. After several unpleasant early experiences with pharmacological substances, Holmes had taken to making his own; his scientific curiosity was naturally suited to the production of a uniform and pleasant concoction that perfectly matched the somewhat unusual needs of his mental constitution. 

A seven per cent solution of cocaine, injected intravenously, was his drug of choice when boredom and ennui crept, death-like, upon him, but there was nothing as efficacious as opium for the agitation of mind from which he sometimes suffered acutely. He needed the calming bliss of the poppy now, he thought, as he never had before.

Removing the small vial of milky liquid from his case, Holmes prepared his dose, mixing a rather greater quantity than usual into the cup of warmed wine the boy had left. 

Unbearable, the wait for the effects to begin; his heart pounded unpleasantly and the room began to spin. Sherlock strove to calm his mind and slow his respirations by remembering the regimented process of production he had so meticulously developed and refined. 

One pound opium, he recited to himself above the pounding in his ears, in thin slices; distilled water, six pints. Macerate the opium in two pints of the water for twenty-four hours, and express the liquor. Reduce the opium to a uniform pulp, macerate it again in two pints of the water for twenty-four hours, and express. Repeat the operation a third time. Mix the liquors, strain through flannel, and evaporate by a water bath to a proper consistency. 

At last, at last, the lassitude began to claim him, and he calmed. 

Holmes collapsed back upon his bed, surrendering his mind to the effects of the drug. He felt a familiar, heavy warmth in his limbs, and a delightful ease stole over his mind. The weight in his heart was lifted, and all his anxiety ceased. Sherlock felt himself anchored in his physical sensations as he rarely was in sober life; his heart sang, he felt the blood fill his veins, the air delicious in his lungs. 

He lay, for a time, simply observing the sensations; he had some thought of cataloguing the effects of various drugs on a variety of mental states. Whether Sherlock was awake or asleep – whether, indeed, he was dead or alive – became inconsequential to him when the shadow thrown by his single candle coalesced in the corner of his chamber, and the indistinct figure of a man stepped forth. Sherlock squinted, and the figure resolved itself into John himself, beloved John, smiling warmly and saying nothing, but walking slowly to the bed where Sherlock lay. Sherlock had had opium hallucinations before, many more than he could, in fact, recall; detailed images of fantastical cities through which he’d walked, seemingly all night; giant feasts laid out before him where every morsel was a new delight; even, once, an endless library of books no man had read before him. But never, even so, had a vision been more welcome. 

The verisimilitude of it left Holmes breathless; he knew his eyes were now traitors to truth, but he cared not, and surrendered himself entirely to it. 

“John,” Sherlock breathed, lifting his hand to the apparition, which had stopped at the foot of the bed. The image looked down at him with such infinite tenderness that Sherlock felt his heart constrict, even through the opium fog, and water stood in his eyes. Such was the cruelty of this vision, however, that while Sherlock could catalogue each hair on John’s head; could see the very flecks in the eyes that gazed so longingly into his own, his friend had no corporeality, and when Sherlock rose to reach for John’s hand, sought to pull him onto the bed to rest, only rest together, his grasp met empty air. 

He groaned, again, in frustration, and fell back against the cushions. The apparition smiled, though, and advanced upon Sherlock, moving up over the bed. It did not disturb a blanket or cushion, and made no impression on the soft mattress as it came, inexorably, up, to hover over Sherlock’s prone form. They locked eyes; the self-drugged and tortured barrister and the apparition that did not, could not, exist. Sherlock would have sworn on his life that he could feel the warmth of the other’s body pressing against him. 

And oh! How he longed for that pressure; for the satisfaction of something solid and real against his skin. The desire he felt for John, kept so carefully in check for all but the briefest moments, burned through him now; he felt he could not go on living without touching, without being touched by, his John. The mad impulse to which he had succumbed, to kiss his friend, if only once, was as nothing to this desperate agony of longing.

John’s soft eyes seemed to understand, seemed even to reciprocate; the apparition nodded slightly, and brought his hand up before Sherlock’s face, waiting. Holmes raised his own hand to the air, touching and not touching: their hands were one. 

They moved together, then, the dream and the man, hands exploring the landscape of Sherlock’s body, tracing his heaving breast, teasing the delicate hairs on his arm, caressing his belly, moving ever lower. Sherlock felt known in a way he never had before; John had flayed him open, exposed his every nerve to the air. At last, they reached Sherlock’s straining trousers. Sherlock’s eyes were ever trained on John’s face, and when their joined hands hovered over that site of Sherlock’s great need, a flush sprang up on the apparition’s face, and he bit his lip. 

Suddenly, Sherlock could not move quickly enough. He yanked open his trousers, pulling aside his drawers, and released the aching member that strained up toward its beloved. 

Eyes locked with the apparition that hovered above him, Sherlock seized control of their joined hands, stroked harshly, desperately. John nodded, minutely, and did not look away as Sherlock’s movements became more frantic on the bed; panting and sobbing, he thrust frantically up into their hands until with a last, violent shudder, Sherlock spent himself, the name of his friend on his lips. He was insensible short minutes later, unconscious and alone in an empty room.

* * * * *

Sherlock startled awake with a hoarse cry. In the dim moonlight that crept through his shuttered window, the simple furnishings of his room at the Castle Inn seemed foreign. He could not remember his dream, but it had profoundly unsettled him. The after-effects of the opiate he had taken left him disoriented in body and sick at heart. His breath came in strangled gasps. “I would give ten years of my own life if I could see him alive,” he whispered fiercely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Sunday Summer Serial: thanks to redscudery for the brilliant idea!
> 
> Thursday Teasers posted on my Tumblr (http://doctornerdington.tumblr.com).
> 
> Feedback appreciated.
> 
> Next week: "At the Castle Inn."


	6. At the Castle Inn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a posthumous collaboration with Mary Elizabeth Braddon; I've adapted her novel Lady Audley's Secret, and retained much of her original structure and language. ALL CREDIT TO HER.
> 
> Current rating: all audiences (will change to explicit in later chapters).
> 
> Braddon's novel was originally published serially, as this adaptation is. Chapter updates every Sunday throughout the summer!

The little sitting-room into which Jeannine Milverton ushered Sherlock Holmes the next morning was situated on the ground floor, and only separated by a lath-and-plaster partition from the little bar-parlor occupied by the innkeeper and his wife. 

It seemed as though the wise architect who had superintended the building of the Castle Inn had taken especial care that nothing but the frailest and most flimsy material should be used, and that the wind, having a special fancy for this unprotected spot, should have full play for the indulgence of its caprices. 

To this end, pitiful woodwork had been used instead of solid masonry; rickety ceilings had been propped up by fragile rafters, and beams that threatened on every stormy night to fall upon the heads of those beneath them; doors whose specialty was never to be shut, yet always to be banging; windows constructed with a peculiar view to letting in the draft when they were shut, and keeping out the air when they were open. The hand of genius had devised this lonely country inn; and there was not an inch of woodwork, or trowelful of plaster employed in all the rickety construction that did not offer its own peculiar weak point to every assault of its indefatigable foe. 

Sherlock looked about him with a feeble smile of resignation. It was a change, decidedly, from the luxurious comforts of Stamford Court, and it was rather a strange fancy of the young barrister to prefer loitering at this dreary village hostelry to returning to his snug chambers in Figtree Court. 

His head pounded dreadfully after his indulgences of the night before; he had perfected his opium dosages with scientific accuracy to avoid any unpleasant after-effects, but last night had abandoned his usual methods and succumbed, in desperation, to rather a larger dose than was prudent. He groaned slightly as he sank into a chair, trying to jar his aching head as little as he could, and wondering how he would ever get through the misery and tedium of the morning. His spirits were low, very low, and the fearful ache had returned to his heart. 

But he had brought his Lares and Penates with him, in the shape of his German pipe, his tobacco canister, and half a dozen French novels, and he turned his attention to his two ill-conditioned, canine favorites, which sat shivering before the smoky little fire, barking shortly and sharply now and then, by way of hinting for some slight refreshment. 

While Mr. Sherlock Holmes contemplated his new surroundings, Jeannine Milverton summoned a little village lad who was in the habit of running errands for her, and taking him into the kitchen, gave him a tiny note, carefully folded and sealed. 

"You know Stamford Court?" 

"Yes, ma’am." 

"If you'll run there with this letter today, and see that it's put safely in Lady Stamford's hands, I'll give you a shilling." 

"Yes, ma’am." 

"You understand? Ask to see my lady; you can say you've a message—not a note, mind—but a message from Jeannine Milverton; and when you see her, give this into her own hand."

"Yes, ma’am."

"You won't forget?" 

"No, ma’am." 

"Then be off with you." 

The boy waited for no second bidding, but in another moment was scudding along the lonely high road, down the sharp descent that led to Stamford. 

Jeannine Milverton went to the window, and looked out at the figure of the lad hurrying through the bright winter morning. She wished she were running freely beside him, truth be told, for she had already begun to chafe under the authority of her new husband, and longed for her days at Stamford Court when she belonged only to herself, and had the companionship of a fair and clever mistress with which to occupy herself. 

At last, she sighed and turned away from the window. "If there's any bad meaning in Mr. Holmes coming here," she thought, "my lady will know of it, at any rate."

Jeannine herself served the neatly arranged breakfast-tray, with its little covered dish of ham and eggs which had been prepared for this unlooked-for visitor. Her dark hair was as smoothly braided, and her light gray dress fitted as precisely as of old. The same neutral tints pervaded the room itself, and her dress; no showy rose-colored ribbons or rustling silk gown proclaimed the well-to-do innkeeper's wife. And yet, Jeannine Milverton was a person who never lost her individuality. Silent and self-constrained, she seemed to hold herself within herself, and take no influence from the outer world. 

Sherlock looked at her thoughtfully as she spread the cloth, and drew the table nearer to the fireplace. 

"That," he thought, "is a woman who could keep a secret." 

The dogs looked rather suspiciously at the quiet figure of Mrs. Milverton gliding softly about the room, from the teapot to the caddy, and from the caddy to the kettle singing on the hob. 

"Will you pour out my tea for me, Mrs. Milverton?" said Sherlock, seating himself on a horsehair-covered arm-chair, which fitted him as tightly in every direction as if he had been measured for it. 

"You have come straight from the Court, sir?" said Jeannine, as she handed Sherlock the sugar-basin.

"Yes; I only left Stamford Court last night." 

"And my lady, sir, was she quite well?" 

"Yes, quite well." 

"As gay and light-hearted as ever, sir?" 

"As you say, as gay and light-hearted as ever." 

Jeannine retired respectfully after having poured out Mr. Holmes’ tea, but as she stood with her hand upon the lock of the door he spoke again. 

"You knew Lady Stamford when she was Miss Mary Morstan, did you not?" he asked. 

"Yes, sir. I lived at Mrs. Dawson's when my lady was governess there." 

"Indeed! Was she long in the surgeon's family?" 

"A little less than a year, sir." 

"And she came from London?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"And she was an orphan, I believe?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"Always as cheerful as she is now?" 

"Always, sir." 

Sherlock emptied his teacup and handed it to Mrs. Milverton. Their eyes met—a lazy look in his, and an active, searching glance in hers. 

"This woman would be good in a witness-box," he thought; "it would take a clever lawyer to bother her in a cross-examination." 

He finished his second cup of tea, pushed away his plate, fed his dogs, and lighted his pipe, while Jeannine carried off the breakfast-tray. 

The wind came whistling up across the frosty open country, and through the leafless woods, and rattled fiercely at the window-frames. 

"There's a triangular draught from those two windows and the door that scarcely adds to the comfort of this apartment," murmured Sherlock; "and there certainly are pleasanter sensations than that of standing up to one's knees in cold water." 

He poked the fire, patted his dogs, put on his great coat, rolled a rickety old sofa close to the hearth, wrapped his legs in his railway rug, and stretching himself at full length upon the narrow horsehair cushion, smoked his pipe, and watched the bluish-gray wreaths curling upward to the dingy ceiling. 

"No," he murmured, again; "that is a woman who can keep a secret. A counsel for the prosecution could get very little out of her." 

I have said that the bar-parlor was only separated from the sitting-room occupied by Sherlock by a lath-and-plaster partition. The young barrister could hear the two or three village tradesmen and a couple of farmers laughing and talking round the bar, while Charlie Milverton served them morning pints of weak ale, with coarse bread and cheese. 

Very often he could even hear their words, especially the landlord's, for he spoke in a booming, loud voice, and had a more boastful manner than any of his customers. 

"The man is a bully and an oaf," said Sherlock, as he laid down his pipe. "I'll go and talk to him by-and-by." 

He waited till the few morning visitors to the Castle had dropped away one by one, and then strolled quietly into the bar-parlor, where the landlord was seated with his wife. 

Jeannine was busy at a little table, upon which stood a prim work-box, with every reel of cotton and glistening steel bodkin in its appointed place. She was darning the coarse gray stockings that adorned her husband's awkward feet, but she did her work as daintily as if they had been my lady's delicate silken hose. The vague air of refinement that pervaded her nature clung to her as closely in the society of her boorish husband at the Castle Inn as in Lady Stamford's boudoir at the Court, as if she could continue on as Lady Stamford’s maid simply by force of imagination. 

She looked up suddenly as Sherlock entered the bar-parlor. There was some shade of vexation in her dark eyes, which changed to an expression of anxiety—nay, rather of almost terror—as she glanced from Mr. Holmes to Charlie Milverton. 

"I have come in for a few minutes' chat before I go back to bed for the day," said Sherlock congenially, settling himself very comfortably before the cheerful fire. "Would you object to a cigar, Mrs. Milverton? I mean, of course, to my smoking one," he added, explanatorily. 

"Not at all, sir." 

"It would be rich, her objecting to a bit o' tobacco," growled Mr. Milverton, "when me and the customers smoke all day." 

Jeaninne glanced up at him with distaste. 

Sherlock lighted his cigar with a gilt-paper match of Jeannine's making that adorned the chimney-piece, and took half a dozen reflective puffs before he spoke. 

"I want you to tell me all about Stamford village, Mr. Milverton," he said, presently. 

"Then that's pretty soon told," replied Charlie, with a harsh, grating laugh. "Of all the dull holes as ever a man set foot in, this is about the dullest. Not that the business don't pay pretty tidy; I don't complain of that; but I should ha' liked a public at Chelmsford, or Brentwood, or Romford, or some place where there's a bit of life in the streets; and I might have had it," he added, discontentedly, "if folks hadn't been so precious stingy." 

As her husband muttered this complaint in a grumbling undertone, Jeannine looked up from her work and spoke to him. 

"We forgot to shut the brew-house door, Charlie," she said. "Will you come with me and help me put up the bar?" 

"The brew-house door can bide for now," said Mr. Milverton; "I ain't goin' to move now. I've seated myself for a comfortable smoke." 

He took a long clay pipe from a corner of the fender as he spoke, and began to fill it deliberately. 

"I don't feel easy about that brew-house door, Charlie," remonstrated his wife; "there are always tramps about, and they can get in easily when the bar isn't up." 

"Go and put the bar up yourself, then, can't you?" answered Mr. Milverton. 

"It's too heavy for me to lift." 

"Then let it bide, if you're too fine a lady to see to it yourself. You're very anxious all of a sudden about this here brew-house door. I suppose you don't want me to open my mouth to this here gent, that's about it. Oh, you needn't frown at me to stop my speaking! You're always putting in your tongue and clipping off my words before I've half said 'em; but I won't stand it. Do you hear? I won't stand it!" 

Jeannine Milverton shrugged her shoulders, folded her work, shut her work-box, and crossing her hands in her lap, sat with stony eyes fixed upon her husband's bull-like face. 

"Then you don't particularly care to live at Stamford?" said Sherlock, politely, as if anxious to change the conversation. 

"No, I don't," answered Charlie; "and I don't care who knows it; and, as I said before, if folks hadn't been so precious stingy, I might have had a public in a thrivin' market town, instead of this tumble-down old place, where a man has his hair blowed off his head on a windy day. What's fifty pound, or what's a hundred pound—" 

"Charlie! Charlie!" 

"No, you're not goin' to stop my mouth with all your 'Charlie, Charlies!'" answered Mr. Milverton to his wife's remonstrance. "I say again, what's a hundred pound?" 

"No," answered Sherlock Holmes, with wonderful distinctness, and addressing his words to Charlie Milverton, but fixing his eyes upon Jeannine's anxious face. "What, indeed, is a hundred pounds to a man possessed of the power which you hold, or rather which your wife holds, over the person in question." 

Jeannine's face, at all times self-possessed, seemed suddenly to grow pale; as her eyelids drooped under Sherlock Holmes's searching glance, a visible change came over the hues of her complexion. 

"Well! A quarter to twelve," said Sherlock, looking at his watch. "You’ll be serving the punters lunch soon, my worthy host. I’m for bed, for I passed a dreadful night, and my habits are irregular at the best of times. Good day, Mrs. Milverton. You needn't send up hot water until I ring." 

* * * * *

Six o'clock struck that evening, and found Mr. Sherlock Holmes still lounging over the well ordered little tea table, with one of his dogs at each side of his arm-chair, regarding him with watchful eyes and opened mouths, awaiting the expected morsel. Sherlock had a county paper on his knees, and made a feeble effort now and then to read the first page, which was filled with advertisements of farming stock, quack medicines, and other interesting matter. 

The weather had changed, and the snow, which had for the last few days been looming blackly in the frosty sky, fell in great feathery flakes against the windows, and lay piled in the little bit of garden-ground without. 

The long, lonely road leading toward Stamford Court seemed untrodden by a footstep, as Sherlock Holmes looked out at the wintry landscape. 

"Lively," he said, "for a man used to the fascinations of Temple Bar."

And then his mind turned to other days, better days, days spent seated in a similar parlour with John Watson, looking out over a similar landscape. He thought of how even the dull happenings of Stamford took an amusing and interesting glow in John’s company, for he had that magical ability of spinning entertainment out of the slightest gossamer threads. Holmes tried to imagine a time when he would not miss John’s company. He could not.

As he watched the snow-flakes falling every moment thicker and faster upon the lonely road, he was surprised by seeing a brougham driving slowly up the hill. 

"I wonder what unhappy wretch has too restless a spirit to stop at home on such an evening as this," he muttered, as he returned to the arm-chair by the fire. 

He had only reseated himself a few moments when Jeannine Milverton entered the room to announce Lady Stamford. 

"Lady Stamford! Pray beg her to come in," said Sherlock; and then, as Jeannine left the room to usher in this unexpected visitor, he muttered between his teeth—"A false move, my lady, and one I never looked for from you." 

Mary Stamford was radiant on this cold and snowy January evening. Other people's noses are rudely assailed by the sharp fingers of the grim ice-king, but not my lady's; other people's lips turn pale and blue with the chilling influence of the bitter weather, but my lady's pretty little rosebud of a mouth retained its brightest coloring and cheeriest freshness. 

She was wrapped in the very sables which Sherlock Holmes had brought from Russia, and carried a muff that the young man thought seemed almost as big as herself. 

She looked a childish, helpless, babyfied little creature; and Sherlock looked down upon her with some touch of pity in his eyes, as she came up to the hearth by which he was standing, and warmed her tiny gloved hands at the blaze. 

"What an evening, Mr. Holmes!" she said, "what an evening!" 

"Yes, indeed! Why did you come out in such weather?" 

"Because I wished to see you—particularly." 

"Indeed!" 

"Yes," said my lady, with an air of considerable embarrassment, playing with the button of her glove, and almost wrenching it off in her restlessness—"yes, Mr. Holmes, I felt that you had not been well treated; that—that you had, in short, reason to complain; and that an apology was due to you." 

"I do not wish for any apology, Lady Stamford." 

"But you are entitled to one," answered my lady, quietly. "Why, my dear Sherlock, should we be so ceremonious toward each other? You were very comfortable at Stamford; we were very glad to have you there; but, my dear, silly husband must needs take it into his foolish head that it is dangerous for his poor little wife's peace of mind to have man friend of eight or nine and twenty smoking his cigars in her boudoir, and, behold! our pleasant little family circle is broken up." 

Mary Stamford spoke with that peculiar childish vivacity which seemed so natural to her, Sherlock looking down almost sadly at her bright, animated face. 

"Lady Stamford," he said, "Heaven forbid that either you or I should ever bring grief or dishonor upon Sir Michael’s generous heart! Better, perhaps, that I should be out of the house—better, perhaps, that I had never entered it!" 

My lady had been looking at the fire while he spoke, but at his last words she lifted her head suddenly, and looked him full in the face with a wondering expression—an earnest, questioning gaze, whose full meaning the young barrister understood. 

"Oh, pray do not be alarmed, Lady Stamford," he said, gravely. "You have no sentimental nonsense, no silly infatuation, borrowed from Balzac or Dumas fils, to fear from me. The benchers of the Inner Temple will tell you that Sherlock Holmes is troubled with none of the epidemics whose outward signs are turn-down collars and Byronic neckties. I say that I wish I had never entered your house during the last year; but I say it with a far more solemn meaning than any sentimental one." 

My lady shrugged her shoulders. 

"If you insist on talking in enigmas, Mr. Holmes," she said, "you must forgive a poor little woman if she declines to answer them." 

Sherlock made no reply to this speech. 

"But tell me," said my lady, with an entire change of tone, "what could have induced you to come up to this dismal place?" 

"Curiosity." 

"Curiosity?" 

"Yes; I felt an interest in that bull-necked man, Milverton, with the pale hair and wicked gray eyes. A dangerous man, my lady—a man in whose power I should not like to be." 

A sudden change came over Lady Stamford's face; the pretty, roseate flush faded out from her cheeks, and left them waxen white, and angry flashes lightened in her blue eyes. 

"What have I done to you, Sherlock Holmes," she cried, passionately—"what have I done to you that you should hate me so?" 

He answered her very gravely: 

"I had a friend, Lady Stamford, whom I cared for deeply, and since I have lost him I fear that my feelings toward other people are strangely embittered." 

"You mean the Mr. Watson who left you?" she asked, cruelly.

"Yes, I mean the Mr. Watson who has disappeared." 

"And you do not believe in his having sailed for India, or Australia, or some such place?" 

"I do not." 

"But why not?" 

"Forgive me, Lady Stamford, if I decline to answer that question." 

"As you please," she said, carelessly. 

"A week after my friend disappeared," continued Sherlock, "I posted advertisements in all the principal newspapers in India and Australia – it was quite an undertaking – calling upon him to write and tell me of his whereabouts, and also calling on any one who had met him, either in the colonies or on the voyage out, to give me any information respecting him. I ought to receive some answer to this advertisement by the end of this month. To-day is the 27th; the time draws very near." 

"And if you receive no answer?" asked Lady Stamford. 

"If I receive no answer I shall think that my fears have been not unfounded, and I shall do my best to act." 

"What do you mean by that?" 

"Ah, Lady Stamford, you remind me how very powerless I am in this matter. My friend might have been made away with in this very inn, and I might stay here for a twelvemonth, and go away at the last as ignorant of his fate as if I had never crossed the threshold. What do we know of the mysteries that may hang about the houses we enter? If I were to go to-morrow into that commonplace, plebeian, eight-roomed house in which Maria Manning and her husband murdered their guest, I should have no awful prescience of that bygone horror. Foul deeds have been done under the most hospitable roofs; terrible crimes have been committed amid the fairest scenes, and have left no trace upon the spot where they were done. I do not believe in mandrake, or in bloodstains that no time can efface. I believe rather that we may walk unconsciously in an atmosphere of crime, and breathe none the less freely. I believe that we may look into the smiling face of a murderer, and admire its tranquil beauty." 

My lady laughed at Sherlock's earnestness. 

"You seem to have quite a taste for discussing these horrible subjects," she said, rather scornfully; "you ought to have been a detective police officer." 

"I sometimes think I should have been a good one." 

"Why?" 

"Because I persist." 

"But to return to Mr. John Watson, whom we lost sight of in your eloquent discussion. What if you receive no answer to your advertisements?" 

"I shall then consider myself justified in concluding my friend is dead." 

"Yes, and then—?" 

"I shall examine the effects he left at my chambers." 

"Indeed! and what are they? Coats, waistcoats, varnished boots, and meerschaum pipes, I suppose," said Lady Stamford, laughing. 

"No; letters—letters from his friends, his old schoolfellows, his father, his brother officers." 

"Yes?" 

"Letters, too, from his wife." 

My lady was silent for some few moments, looking thoughtfully at the fire. 

"Have you ever seen any of the letters written by the late Mrs. Watson?" she asked presently. 

"Never. Poor soul! her letters are not likely to throw much light upon my friend's fate. I dare say she wrote the usual womanly scrawl. There are very few who write so charming and uncommon a hand as yours, Lady Stamford." 

"Ah, you know my hand, of course." 

"Yes, I know it very well indeed." 

My lady warmed her hands once more, and then taking up the big muff which she had laid aside upon a chair, prepared to take her departure. 

"You have refused to accept my apology, Mr. Holmes," she said; "but I trust you are not the less assured of my feelings toward you." 

"Perfectly assured, Lady Stamford." 

"Then good-by, and let me recommend you not to stay long in this miserable draughty place, if you do not wish to take rheumatism back to Figtree Court." 

"I shall return to town to-morrow morning to see after my letters." 

"Then once more, good-bye." 

She held out her hand; he took it loosely in his own. It seemed such a feeble little hand that he might have crushed it in his strong grasp, had he chosen to be so pitiless. In truth, he was tempted for more than an instant.

He attended her to her carriage, and watched it as it drove off, not toward Stamford Court, but in the direction of Brentwood, which was about six miles from the village. “I hate her,” he thought savagely to himself. “Bold, brazen, dissembling creature. It is insupportable, all this play-acting, and yet what alternative have I?”

About an hour after this, as Sherlock stood at the door of the inn, smoking a cigar and watching the snow falling in the whitened fields opposite, he saw the brougham drive back, empty this time, to the door of the inn. 

"Have you taken Lady Stamford back to the Court?" he said to the coachman, who had stopped to call for a mug of hot spiced ale. 

"No, sir; I've just come from the Brentwood station. My lady started for London by the last train." 

"For town? Tonight?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"My lady gone to London!" said Sherlock, as he returned to the little sitting-room. "Then I'll follow her by the first train in the morning; and if I'm not very much mistaken, I know where to find her." 

He rose early the next morning, hurriedly packed his portmanteau, paid his bill, fastened his dogs together with a couple of leathern collars and a chain, and stepped into the rumbling fly kept by the Castle Inn for the convenience of Stamford. He caught the first express less than a dozen hours after Lady Stamford’s own train had departed, and settled himself comfortably in a corner of an empty first-class carriage, coiled up in a couple of railway rugs, and smoking a cigar in mild defiance of the authorities.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Sunday Summer Serial: thanks to redscudery for the brilliant idea!
> 
> Thursday Teasers posted on my Tumblr (http://doctornerdington.tumblr.com).
> 
> Feedback appreciated.
> 
> Next week: Sherlock has a moment of clarity in "The Writing in the Book."


	7. The Writing in the Book

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 7 of 14 -- halfway there! Things only heat up from here, dear readers!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a posthumous collaboration with Mary Elizabeth Braddon; I've adapted her novel Lady Audley's Secret, and retained much of her original structure and language. ALL CREDIT TO HER.
> 
> Braddon's novel was originally published serially, as this adaptation is. Chapter updates every Sunday throughout the summer!

It was exactly five minutes past nine in the morning as Mr. Sherlock Holmes’ train arrived in London. The man stepped out upon the platform at Liverpool Street Station, and waited placidly until such time as his dogs and his portmanteau should be delivered up to the attendant porter who had called his cab.

Sherlock Holmes waited with consummate patience for a considerable time; but as the express was generally a long train, and as there were a great many passengers from Essex carrying guns and pointers, and other paraphernalia of a critical description, it took a long while to make matters agreeable to all claimants, and even the barrister's seraphic indifference to mundane affairs nearly gave way. 

Suddenly an idea seemed to strike him, and he left the porter to struggle for the custody of his goods, and walked round to the other side of the station. 

He heard a bell ring, and looking at the clock, had remembered that the down train for Colchester started at this time. He had learned what it was to have an earnest purpose since the disappearance of John Watson; and he reached the opposite platform in time to see the passengers take their seats. 

There was one lady who had evidently only just arrived at the station; for she hurried on to the platform at the very moment that Sherlock approached the train, and almost ran against that gentleman in her haste and excitement. 

"I beg your pardon," she began, ceremoniously; then raising her eyes from Mr. Holmes's waistcoat, which was about on a level with her pretty face, she exclaimed in surprise, "Sherlock, are you in London already?" 

"Yes, Lady Stamford; you were quite right; the Castle Inn is a dismal place, and—" 

"You got tired of it—I knew you would. Please open the carriage door for me: the train will start in two minutes." 

Sherlock Holmes was looking at her with a grave expression of countenance. 

"What does it mean?" he thought. "She is altogether a different being to the wretched, helpless creature who dropped her mask for a moment, and looked at me with her own pitiful face, in the little room at the Castle Inn, just last night. What has happened to cause the change?" 

He opened the door for her while he thought this, and helped her to settle herself in her seat, spreading her furs over her knees, and arranging the huge velvet mantle in which her slender little figure was almost hidden. 

"Thank you very much; how good you are to me," she said, as he did this. "You will think me very foolish to travel upon such a day, without my dear darling's knowledge too; but I went up to town to settle a very terrific milliner's bill, which I did not wish my best of husbands to see; for, indulgent as he is, he might think me extravagant; and I cannot bear to suffer even in his thoughts." 

"Heaven forbid that you ever should, Lady Stamford," Sherlock said, gravely. 

She looked at him for a moment with a smile, which had something defiant in its brightness. 

"Heaven forbid it, indeed," she murmured. "I don't think I ever shall." 

The second bell rang, and the train moved as she spoke. The last Sherlock Holmes saw of her was that bright defiant smile. 

"Whatever object brought her to London has been successfully accomplished," he thought. "Has she baffled me by some piece of jugglery? Am I never to get any nearer to the truth, but am I to be tormented all my life by wretched suspicions?" 

He was still mentally asking himself this question as he ascended the stairs in Figtree Court, with one of his dogs under each arm, and his railway rugs over his shoulder. 

He found his chambers in their accustomed order. The geraniums had been carefully tended, testifying to the care of honest Mrs. Hudson. Sherlock cast a hurried glance round the sitting-room; then setting down the dogs upon the hearth-rug, he walked straight into the little inner chamber which served as his dressing-room. 

It was in this room that he kept disused portmanteaus, battered japanned cases, and other lumber; and it was in this room that John Watson had left his luggage. Sherlock lifted a portmanteau from the top of a large trunk, and kneeling down before it with a lighted candle in his hand, carefully examined the lock. 

To all appearance it was exactly in the same condition in which John had left it, when he laid his mourning garments aside and placed them in this shabby repository with all other memorials of his dead wife. Sherlock brushed his coat sleeve across the worn, leather-covered lid, upon which the initials J. W. were inscribed with big brass-headed nails; but Mrs. Hudson must have been the most precise of housekeepers, for neither the portmanteau nor the trunk were dusty. 

Mr. Holmes dispatched a boy to fetch his attendant, and paced up and down his sitting-room waiting anxiously for her arrival. 

She came in about ten minutes, and, after expressing her delight in the return of "the master," humbly awaited his orders. 

"I only sent for you to ask if anybody has been here; that is to say, if anybody has applied to you for the key of my rooms to-day—any lady?" 

"Lady? No, indeed, sir! There's been no one asking for the key; barring the blacksmith, of course." 

"The blacksmith!" 

"Yes; the blacksmith you ordered come to-day." 

"I order a blacksmith!" exclaimed Sherlock. "I left a bottle of French brandy in the cupboard," he thought, "and Mrs. H. has been evidently enjoying herself." 

"Indeed, sir! The blacksmith you told to see to the locks," replied Mrs. Hudson patiently, as though speaking to a very young child. "Him that lives down in one of the little streets by the bridge," she added, giving a very lucid description of the man's whereabouts. 

Sherlock lifted his eyebrows in mute despair. 

"If you'll sit down and compose yourself, Mrs. H.," he said—he abbreviated her name thus on principle, for the avoidance of unnecessary labor—"perhaps we shall be able by and by to understand each other. You say a blacksmith has been here?" 

"I did, sir." 

"To-day?" 

"Quite correct, sir." 

Step by step Mr. Holmes elicited the following information. A locksmith had called upon Mrs. Hudson that afternoon at three o'clock, and had asked for the key of Mr. Holmes's chambers, in order that he might look to the locks of the doors, which he stated were all out of repair. He declared that he was acting upon Mr. Holmes's own orders, conveyed to him by a letter from the country, where the gentleman was spending his Christmas. Mrs. Hudson, believing in the truth of this statement, had admitted the man to the chambers, where he stayed about half an hour. 

"But you were with him while he examined the locks, I suppose?" Mr. Holmes asked. 

"Sure I was, sir, in and out, as you may say, all the time, for I've been cleaning the stairs this afternoon, and I took the opportunity to begin my scouring while the man was at work." 

"Oh, you were in and out all the time. If you could conveniently give me a plain answer, Mrs. H., I should be glad to know what was the longest time that you were out while the locksmith was in my chambers?" 

But Mrs. Hudson could not give a plain answer. It might have been ten minutes; though she didn't think it was as much. It might have been a quarter of an hour; but she was sure it wasn't more. It didn't seem to her more than five minutes, but "those stairs, sir, and my poor hip;" and here she rambled off into a disquisition upon the scouring of stairs in general, and the stairs outside Sherlock's chambers in particular. 

Mr. Holmes sighed the weary sigh of mournful resignation. 

"Never mind, Mrs. H.," he said; "the locksmith had plenty of time to do anything he wanted to do, I dare say, without your being any the wiser." 

Mrs. Hudson stared at her employer with mingled surprise and alarm. 

"There wasn't anything for him to steal, sir! I never thought of it –" 

"No, no, I understand. There, that'll do, Mrs. H. Tell me where the man lives, and I'll go and see him." 

"But you'll have a bit of lunch, sir?" 

"I'll go and see the locksmith, first." 

He took up his hat as he announced his determination, and walked toward the door. 

"The man's address, Mrs. H?" 

The housekeeper directed him to a small street at the back of St. Bride's Church, and thither Mr. Sherlock Holmes quietly strolled, through the miry slush which simple Londoners call snow. 

He found the locksmith, and, at the sacrifice of the crown of his hat, contrived to enter the low, narrow doorway of a little open shop. A jet of gas was flaring in the unglazed window, and there was a very merry party in the little room behind the shop; but no one responded to Sherlock's "Hulloa!" The reason of this was sufficiently obvious. The party was so much absorbed in its own merriment as to be deaf to all commonplace summonses from the outer world; and it was only when Sherlock, advancing further into the cavernous little shop, made so bold as to open the half-glass door which separated him from the merry-makers, that he succeeded in obtaining their attention. 

A very jovial picture of the Teniers school was presented to Mr. Sherlock Holmes upon the opening of this door. 

The locksmith, with his wife and family, and two or three droppers-in of the female sex, were clustered about a table, which was laden with an excessively large luncheon, and adorned by two bottles; not vulgar bottles of that colorless extract of the juniper berry, much affected by the masses; but of bona fide port and sherry—fiercely strong sherry, which left a fiery taste in the mouth, nut-brown sherry—rather unnaturally brown, if anything—and fine old port; no sickly vintage, faded and thin from excessive age: but a rich, full-bodied wine, sweet and substantial and high colored. 

The locksmith was speaking as Sherlock Holmes opened the door. 

"And with that," he said, "she walked off, as graceful as you please." 

The whole party was thrown into confusion by the appearance of Mr. Holmes, but it was to be observed that the locksmith was more embarrassed than his companions. He set down his glass so hurriedly, that he spilt his wine, and wiped his mouth nervously with the back of his dirty hand. 

"You called at my chambers to-day," Sherlock said, quietly. "Don't let me disturb you, ladies –” this to the droppers-in. "You called at my chambers to-day, Mr. White, and—" 

The man interrupted him. 

"I hope, sir, you will be so good as to overlook the mistake," he stammered. "I'm sure, sir, I'm very sorry it should have occurred. I was sent for to another gentleman's chambers, Mr. Henry, in Garden Court; and the name slipped my memory; and havin' done odd jobs before for you, I thought it must be you as wanted me to-day; and I called at Mrs. Hudson's for the key accordin'; but directly I see the locks in your chambers, I says to myself, the gentleman's locks ain't out of order; the gentleman don't want all his locks repaired." 

"But you stayed half an hour." 

"Yes, sir; for there was one lock out of order—the door nighest the staircase—and I took it off and cleaned it and put it on again. I won't charge you nothin' for the job, and I hope as you'll be as good as to look over the mistake as has occurred, which I've been in business thirteen years come July, and—" 

"Nothing of this kind ever happened before, I suppose," said Sherlock, gravely. "No, it's altogether a singular kind of business, not likely to come about every day. You've been enjoying yourself I see, Mr. White. You've done a good stroke of work this morning, I'll wager—made a lucky hit, and you're what you call 'standing treat,' eh?" 

Sherlock Holmes looked straight into the man's dingy face as he spoke. The locksmith was not a bad-looking fellow, and there was nothing that he need have been ashamed of in his face, except the dirt, and that, as Hamlet's mother says, "is common;" but in spite of this, Mr. White's eyelids dropped under the young barrister's calm scrutiny, and he stammered out some apologetic sort of speech about his "missus," and his missus' neighbors, and port wine and sherry wine, with as much confusion as if he, an honest mechanic in a free country, were called upon to excuse himself to Sherlock Holmes for being caught in the act of enjoying himself in his own parlor. 

Sherlock cut him short with a careless nod. 

"Pray don't apologize," he said; "I like to see people enjoy themselves. Good-night, Mr. White good-night, ladies." 

He lifted his hat to "the missus," and the missus' neighbors, who were much fascinated by his easy manner and his handsome face, and left the shop. 

"And so," he muttered to himself as he went back to his chambers, "'with that she walked off as graceful as you please.' If only I had arrived three minutes sooner! Oh, John Watson, am I ever to come any nearer to the secret of your fate? Am I coming nearer to it now, slowly but surely? Is the radius to grow narrower day by day until it draws a dark circle around the home of those I care for? How is it all to end?" 

He sighed wearily as he walked slowly back across the flagged quadrangles in the Temple to his own solitary chambers. 

Mrs. Hudson had prepared for him that bachelor's dinner, which, however excellent and nutritious in itself, has no claim to the special charm of novelty. She had cooked for him a mutton-chop, which was soddening itself between two plates upon the little table near the fire. 

Sherlock Holmes sighed as he sat down to the solitary meal, remembering his friend with an aching, regretful sorrow. 

"His companionship made all of this bearable" he murmured sentimentally, and then paused. “Here I sit at my own table,” he thought with some alarm, “pining after a man who left me weeks and weeks ago; whom logic dictates I should have given over ages ago. What is this that has happened to me?” 

He pushed away his plate impatiently after eating a few mouthfuls. 

"I have never eaten a good dinner at this table since I lost John Watson," he said thoughtfully. "The place seems as gloomy as if the poor fellow had died in the next room, and had never been taken away to be buried. How long ago that September afternoon appears as I look back at it—that September afternoon upon which I parted with him alive and well; and lost him as suddenly and unaccountably as if a trap-door had opened in the solid earth and let him through to the antipodes!" 

Mr. Holmes rose from the dinner-table and walked over to the cabinet in which he kept the document he had drawn up relating to John Watson. He unlocked the doors of his cabinet, took the paper from the pigeon-hole marked important, and seated himself at his desk to write. He added several paragraphs to those in the document, numbering the fresh paragraphs as carefully as he had numbered the old ones. 

"Heaven help us all," he muttered once; "is this most painful occurrence to be my first professional case?" 

He wrote for about half an hour, then replaced the document in the pigeon-hole, and locked the cabinet. When he had done this, he took a candle in his hand, and went into the room in which were his own portmanteaus and the trunk belonging to John Watson. 

He took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and tried them one by one. The lock of the shabby old trunk was a common one, and at the fifth trial the key turned easily. 

"There'd be no need for anyone to break open such a lock as this," muttered Sherlock, as he lifted the lid of the trunk. 

He slowly emptied it of its contents, taking out each article separately, and laying it carefully upon a chair by his side. He handled the things with a respectful tenderness, as if he had been lifting the dead body of his lost friend. One by one he laid the neatly folded mourning garments on the chair. He found old meerschaum pipes, and soiled, crumpled gloves that had once been fresh from the Parisian maker; old play-bills, whose biggest letters spelled the names of actors who were dead and gone; old perfume-bottles, fragrant with essences, whose fashion had passed away; neat little parcels of letters, each carefully labeled with the name of the writer; fragments of old newspapers; and a little heap of shabby, dilapidated books, each of which tumbled into as many pieces as a pack of cards in Sherlock's incautious hand. But among all the mass of worthless litter, each scrap of which had once had its separate purpose, Sherlock Holmes looked in vain for that which he sought—the packet of letters written to the missing man by his dead wife, Maria Watson. He had heard John allude more than once to the existence of these letters. He had seen him once sorting the faded papers with a reverent hand; and he had seen him replace them, carefully tied together with a faded ribbon which had once been Helen's, among the mourning garments in the trunk. Whether he had afterward removed them, or whether they had been removed since his disappearance by some other hand, it was not easy to say; but they were gone. 

Sherlock Holmes sighed wearily as he replaced the things in the empty box, one by one, as he had taken them out. He stopped with the little heap of tattered books in his hand, and hesitated for a moment. 

"I will keep these out," he muttered, "there may be something to help me in one of them." 

John's library was no very brilliant collection of literature. There was an old Greek Testament and the Eton Latin Grammar; a French pamphlet on the cavalry sword-exercise; an odd volume of Tom Jones with one half of its stiff leather cover hanging to it by a thread; Byron's Don Juan, printed in a murderous type, which must have been invented for the special advantage of oculists and opticians; several tomes of medical information from his hopeful youth as an aspirant doctor, before he had been forced to leave school, and a fat book in a faded gilt and crimson cover. 

Sherlock Holmes locked the trunk and took the books under his arm. Mrs. Hudson was clearing away the remains of his repast when he returned to the sitting-room. He put the books aside on a little table in a corner of the fire-place, and waited patiently while the housekeeper finished her work. He was in no humor even for his meerschaum consoler; the yellow-papered fictions on the shelves above his head seemed stale and profitless—he opened a volume of Balzac, but Lady Stamford's golden curls danced and trembled in a glittering haze before his eyes. The volume dropped from his hand, and he sat wearily watching Mrs. Hudson as she swept up the ashes on the hearth, replenished the fire, drew the dark damask curtains, and put on her bonnet in the disused clerk's office, prior to bidding her employer good-bye. As the door closed upon her at last, he arose impatiently from his chair, and paced up and down the room. 

"Why do I go on with this," he said, "when I know that it is leading me, step by step, day by day, hour by hour, nearer to that conclusion which, of all others, will bring disaster upon my benefactor? Am I tied to a wheel, and must I go with its every revolution, let it take me where it will? Or can I sit down here to-night and say I have done my duty to my missing friend, I have searched for him patiently, but I have searched in vain? Should I be justified in doing this? Should I be justified in letting the chain which I have slowly put together, link by link, drop at this point, or must I go on adding fresh links to that fatal chain until the last rivet drops into its place and the circle is complete? I think, and I believe, that I shall never see my friend's face again; and that no exertion of mine can ever be of any benefit to him. In plainer, crueler words I believe him to be dead. Am I bound to discover how and where he died? Even if it bring scandal and disaster to dear Sir Michael, who has been so like a father to me? Or being, as I think, on the road to that discovery, shall I do a wrong to the memory of John Watson by turning back or stopping still? What am I to do?—what am I to do?" 

He rested his elbows on his knees, and buried his face in his hands. The one purpose which had slowly grown up in his indifferent nature until it had become powerful enough to work a change in that very nature, made him what he had never been before—a good man; conscious of his own weakness; anxious to keep to the strict line of duty; fearful to swerve from the conscientious discharge of the strange task that had been forced upon him; and reliant on a stronger hand than his own to point the way which he was to go. Perhaps he uttered his first heart’s truth that night, seated by his lonely fireside, when he raised his head from a long and silent reverie, and whispered, “God help me, I love him.” 

His eyes had a bright, determined glance, and every feature in his face seemed to wear a new expression. "Justice to the dead first," he said; "mercy to the living afterward." 

He wheeled his easy-chair to the table, trimmed the lamp, and settled himself to the examination of the books. 

He took them up, one by one, and looked carefully through them, first looking at the page on which the name of the owner is ordinarily written, and then searching for any scrap of paper which might have been left within the leaves. On the first page of the Eton Latin Grammar the name of Master Watson was written in a prim, scholastic hand; the French pamphlet had a careless J.W. scrawled on the cover in pencil, in John's big, nearly-illegible calligraphy: the Tom Jones had evidently been bought at a book-stall, and bore an inscription, dated March 14th, 1788, setting forth that the book was a tribute of respect to Mr. Thos. Scrowton, from his obedient servant, James Anderley; the Don Juan and the Testament were blank. Sherlock Holmes breathed more freely; he had arrived at the last but one of the books without any result whatever, and there only remained the fat gilt-and-crimson-bound volume to be examined before his task was finished. 

It was an annual of the year 1845. The copper-plate engravings were yellow and spotted with mildew; the costumes grotesque and outlandish; the simpering beauties faded and commonplace. Even the little clusters of verses (in which the poet's feeble candle shed its sickly light upon the obscurities of the artist's meaning) had an old-fashioned twang; like music on a lyre, whose strings are slackened by the damps of time. Sherlock Holmes did not stop to read any of the mild productions. He ran rapidly through the leaves, looking for any scrap of writing or fragment of a letter which might have been used to mark a place. He found nothing but a bright ring of golden hair, of that glittering hue which is so rarely seen except upon the head of a child—a sunny lock, which curled as naturally as the tendril of a vine. Sherlock Holmes suspended his examination of the book, and folded this yellow lock in a sheet of letter paper, which he sealed with his signet-ring, and laid aside, with the memorandum about John Watson and Molly's letter, in the pigeon-hole marked important. He was going to replace the fat annual among the other books, when he discovered that the two blank leaves at the beginning were stuck together. He was so determined to prosecute his search to the very uttermost, that he took the trouble to part these leaves with the sharp end of his paper-knife, and he was rewarded for his perseverance by finding an inscription upon one of them. This inscription was in three parts, and in three different hands. The first paragraph was dated as far back as the year in which the annual had been published, and set forth that the book was the property of a certain Miss Elizabeth Ann Bince, who had obtained the precious volume as a reward for habits of order, and for obedience to the authorities of Camford House Seminary, Torquay. The second paragraph was in the handwriting of Miss Bince herself, who presented the book, as a mark of undying affection and unfading esteem (Miss Bince was evidently of a romantic temperament) to her beloved friend, Maria Watson. The third paragraph was in the hand of Maria Watson, who gave the annual to John Watson; and it was at the sight of this third paragraph that Mr. Sherlock Holmes's face changed from its natural hue to a sickly, leaden pallor. 

"I thought it would be so," said the young man, shutting the book with a weary sigh. "God knows I was prepared for the worst, and the worst has come. I can see it all now."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to redscudery for the brilliant summer serial idea!
> 
> Thursday Teasers posted on my Tumblr (http://doctornerdington.tumblr.com).
> 
> Comments appreciated.
> 
> Next week: "Family Secrets."


	8. Family Secrets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is is a posthumous collaboration with Mary Elizabeth Braddon; I've adapted her novel Lady Audley's Secret, and retained much of her original structure and language. ALL CREDIT TO HER.
> 
> Current rating: mature. This chapter: all audiences. (Will change to explicit by the end.)
> 
> Braddon's novel was originally published serially, as this adaptation is. Chapter updates every Sunday throughout the summer.

Among the packet of letters which Sherlock Holmes had found in John's trunk, there was one labeled with the name of the missing man's father—the father who had lost the Watson family fortune, forcing John to abandon his dreams of becoming a physician, and then cut him off completely before his marriage, leaving him entirely alone in the world. 

Watson Senior had not been indulgent to his young son; Sherlock had never heard John speak of him with bitterness, but John's careless talk of his father had given his friend some notion of that gentleman's character. He had written to Mr. Watson immediately after the disappearance of John, carefully wording his letter, which vaguely hinted at the writer's fear of some foul play in the mysterious business; and, after the lapse of several weeks, he had received a formal epistle, in which Mr. William Watson expressly declared that he had washed his hands of all responsibility in his son John's affairs; and that his “absurd disappearance” was only in character with his usual “preposterous and inconsiderate conduct.” 

Sherlock Holmes had answered this letter by a few indignant lines, and had promptly abandoned all thought of assistance from the man who, in the natural course of things, should have been most interested in John's fate; but now that he found himself advancing every day some step nearer to the end that lay so darkly before him, his mind reverted to this heartlessly indifferent Mr. William Watson. 

"I will run up to Dorsetshire," he said, "and see this man. If he has any human feeling, or any paternal feeling left for his poor son, he deserves to know of my discoveries firsthand.” 

* * * * *

Mr. William Watson lived in a square, red-brick cottage, within a mile of a little village called Grange Heath, in Dorsetshire. But despite the financial disaster earlier in his life which had left him much reduced, there was no whiff of the desperation of poverty about his home, which was neat and orderly in the extreme, though rather plain and out of date. 

Nobody ever remembered getting upon what is popularly called the blind side of William Watson. He was like his own square-built, northern-fronted, shelterless house. There were no shady nooks in his character into which one could creep for shelter from his hard daylight. He was all daylight. He looked at everything in the same broad glare of intellectual sunlight, and would see no softening shadows that might alter the sharp outlines of cruel facts, subduing them to beauty. I do not know if I express what I mean, when I say that there were no curves in his character—that his mind ran in straight lines, never diverging to the right or the left to round off their pitiless angles. With him right was right, and wrong was wrong. He had never in his merciless, conscientious life admitted the idea that circumstances might mitigate the blackness of wrong or weaken the force of right. 

John had never spoken in depth to Sherlock about the nature of the breach that had led to his estrangement from his father – indeed, he remained entirely silent on the subject – but Sherlock could well imagine that living up to the exacting standards of such a man would be near-impossible for the kindly and sometimes puckish friend he had known. 

"My son did me an unpardonable wrong," Mr. Watson would answer to anyone who had the temerity to speak to him about John, "and from that hour I had no longer a son. I wish him no ill. He is simply dead to me. If you talk to me of him as you would talk of the dead, I shall be ready to hear you. If you speak of him as you would speak of the living, I must decline to listen." 

Once, when John had newly returned from India, Sherlock had inquired whether he ought not write to his father with news of his wife’s death. John had replied: "If I write to him, he will fold my letter with the envelope inside, and indorse it with my name and the date of its arrival," the young man said, "and call everybody in the house to witness that it had not moved him to one softening recollection or one pitiful thought. He will stick to his resolution to his dying day. I dare say, if the truth was known, he is glad that his only son has offended him and given him the opportunity of parading his virtues." 

* * * * *

Sherlock Holmes left London by a train which started before daybreak, and reached Wareham station early in the day. He hired a vehicle at Wareham to take him over to Grange Heath. 

The snow had hardened upon the ground, and the day was clear and frosty, every object in the landscape standing in sharp outline against the cold blue sky. The horses' hoofs clattered upon the ice-bound road, the iron shoes striking on the ground that was almost as iron as themselves. The wintry day bore some resemblance to the man to whom Sherlock was going. Like him, it was sharp, frigid, and uncompromising: like him, it was merciless to distress and impregnable to the softening power of sunshine. It would accept no sunshine but such January radiance as would light up the bleak, bare country without brightening it; and thus resembled William Watson, who took the sternest side of every truth, and declared loudly to the disbelieving world that there never had been, and never could be, any other side. 

Sherlock Holmes's heart sank within him as the shabby hired vehicle stopped at a stern-looking barred fence, and the driver dismounted to open a broad iron gate which swung back with a clanking noise and was caught by a great iron tooth, planted in the ground, which snapped at the lowest bar of the gate as if it wanted to bite. 

This iron gate opened into a scanty drive lined with a half-dozen straight-limbed fir-trees, that grew in rows and shook their sturdy winter foliage defiantly in the very teeth of the frosty breeze. A straight graveled carriage-drive ran between these straight trees across a smoothly kept lawn to a square red-brick cottage, every window of which winked and glittered in the January sunlight as if it had been that moment cleaned by some indefatigable housemaid. 

"If the man is anything like his house," Sherlock thought, "I don't wonder that poor John and he parted." 

At the end of the drive, the conveyance turned a sharp corner (it would have been made to describe a curve in any other man's grounds) and ran before the lower windows of the house. The flyman dismounted at the steps, ascended them, and rang a brass-handled bell, which flew back to its socket, with an angry, metallic snap, as if it had been insulted by the plebeian touch of the man's hand. 

A very old man in black trousers and a striped linen jacket, worn but impeccably clean, opened the door. Mr. Watson was at home. Would the gentleman send in his card? 

Sherlock stood in the small front hall while his card was taken to the master of the house. A barometer and an umbrella-stand were the only adornments. 

The servant returned presently. He was a square, pale-faced man who had the appearance of having outlived every emotion to which humanity is subject. 

"If you will step this way, sir," he said, "Mr. Watson will see you, although he is at breakfast. He begged me to state that everybody in Dorsetshire was acquainted with his breakfast hour." 

This was intended as a stately reproof to Mr. Sherlock Holmes. It had, however, very small effect upon the young barrister. He merely lifted his eyebrows in placid deprecation of himself and everybody else. 

"I don't belong to Dorsetshire," he said. "Mr. Watson might have known that, if he'd done me the honor to read my card. Lead on, my friend." 

The emotionless man looked at Sherlock Holmes with a vacant stare of unmitigated horror, and led the way into a dining-room furnished with the severe simplicity of an apartment which is meant to be ate in, but never lived in. At the top of a table which would have accommodated eighteen persons, but could barely fit into the confines of the small cottage, Sherlock beheld Mr. William Watson. 

Mr. Watson was robed in a dressing-gown of gray cloth. He wore a buff waistcoat, a stiffly starched cambric cravat, and a faultless shirt collar. The cold gray of his dressing gown was almost the same as the cold gray of his eyes, and the pale buff of his waistcoat was the pale buff of his complexion. 

Sherlock Holmes had not expected to find William Watson at all like John in his manners or disposition, but he had expected to see some family likeness between the father and the son. There was none. It would have been impossible to imagine any one more unlike John than the author of his existence. Sherlock scarcely wondered at the cruel letter he received from Mr. Watson when he saw the writer of it. Such a man could scarcely have written otherwise. 

There was a second person in the large room, toward whom Sherlock glanced after saluting William Watson, doubtful how to proceed. This second person was a lady, who sat at the last of a range of four windows, employed with some needlework, the kind which is generally called plain work, and with a large wicker basket, filled with calicoes and flannels, standing by her. 

Sherlock could see that she was young, and that she was like John Watson. 

"His sister!" he thought in that one moment, during which he ventured to glance away from the master of the house toward the female figure at the window. "His sister, no doubt. He was fond of her, I know. Surely, she is not utterly indifferent as to his fate?" 

The lady half rose from her seat, letting her work, which was large and awkward, fall from her lap as she did so, and dropping a reel of cotton, which rolled away upon the polished oaken flooring beyond the margin of the Turkey carpet. 

"Sit down, Harriet," said the hard voice of Mr. Watson. 

That gentleman did not appear to address his daughter, nor had his face been turned toward her when she rose. It seemed as if he had known it by some social magnetism peculiar to himself; it seemed, as his servants were apt disrespectfully to observe, as if he had eyes in the back of his head. 

"Sit down, Harriet," he repeated, "and keep your cotton in your workbox." 

The lady blushed at this reproof, and stooped to look for the cotton. Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was unabashed by the stern presence of the master of the house, knelt on the carpet, found the reel, and restored it to its owner; William Watson staring at the proceeding with an expression of unmitigated astonishment. 

"Perhaps, Mr. ——, Mr. Sherlock Holmes!" he said, looking at the card which he held between his finger and thumb, "perhaps when you have finished looking for reels of cotton, you will be good enough to tell me to what I owe the honor of this visit?" 

He waved his well-shaped hand; and the elderly servant, understanding the gesture, brought forward an old-fashioned, rather shabby red-morocco chair. 

The proceeding was so slow and solemn, that Sherlock had at first thought that something extraordinary was about to be done; but the truth dawned upon him at last, and Mr. Watson dropped into the massive chair. 

"You may remain, Wilson," said Mr. Watson, as the servant was about to withdraw; "Mr. Holmes would perhaps like coffee." 

Sherlock had eaten nothing that morning, but he glanced at the long expanse of dreary table-cloth, the single coffee equipage, and the very little appearance of any substantial fare at all, and he declined Mr. Watson's invitation. 

"Mr. Holmes will not take coffee, Wilson," said the master of the house. "You may go." 

The man bowed and retired, opening and shutting the door as cautiously as if he were taking a liberty in doing it at all, or as if the respect due to Mr. Watson demanded his walking straight through the wood panel like a ghost in a German story. 

Mr. William Watson sat with his gray eyes fixed severely on his visitor, his elbows on the red-morocco arms of his chair, and his finger-tips joined. Had Sherlock Holmes been easily embarrassed, Mr. Watson might have succeeded in making him feel so: but as he would have sat with perfect tranquility upon an open gunpowder barrel lighting his cigar, he was not at all disturbed upon this occasion. The father's dignity seemed a very small thing to him when he thought of the possible causes of the son's disappearance. 

"I wrote to you some time since, Mr. Watson," he said quietly, when he saw that he was expected to open the conversation. 

William Watson bowed. He knew that it was of his lost son that Sherlock came to speak. 

"I received your communication, Mr. Holmes," he said. "It is among other business letters: it was duly answered." 

"That letter concerned your son." 

There was a little rustling noise at the window where the lady sat, as Sherlock said this: he looked at her almost instantaneously, but she did not seem to have stirred. She was not working, but she was perfectly quiet. 

"She's as heartless as her father, I expect, though she resembles John," thought Mr. Holmes. 

"If your letter concerned the person who was once my son, perhaps, sir," said William Watson, "I must ask you to remember that I have no longer a son. He who was my son has been lost to me for many years now. I do not speak of the reason for our estrangement, but I assure you that his conduct was most unnatural – most unnatural. John is dead to me. Long dead.”

"You have no reason to remind me of that, Mr. Watson," answered Sherlock, gravely; "I remember it only too well. I have fatal reason to believe that you have no longer a son. I have bitter cause to think that he is dead." 

It may be that Mr. Watson' complexion faded to a paler shade of buff as Sherlock said this; but he only elevated his bristling gray eyebrows and shook his head gently. 

"No," he said, "no, I assure you, no." 

"I believe that John Watson died in the month of September." 

The girl who had been addressed as Harriet, sat with work primly folded upon her lap, and her hands lying clasped together on her work, and never stirred when Sherlock spoke of his friend's death. He could not distinctly see her face, for she was seated at some distance from him, and with her back to the window. 

"No, no, I assure you," repeated Mr. Watson, "you labor under a sad mistake." 

"You believe that I am mistaken in thinking your son dead?" asked Sherlock. 

"Most certainly," replied Mr. Watson, with a smile, expressive of the serenity of wisdom. "Most certainly, my dear sir. The disappearance was a very clever trick, no doubt, but it was not sufficiently clever to deceive me. You must permit me to understand this matter a little better than you, Mr. Holmes, and you must also permit me to assure you of three things. In the first place, your friend is not dead. In the second place, he is keeping out of the way for the purpose of alarming me, of trifling with my feelings as a—as a man who was once his father, and of ultimately obtaining my forgiveness. In the third place, he will not obtain that forgiveness, however long he may please to keep out of the way; and he would therefore act wisely by returning to his ordinary residence and avocations without delay." 

"Then you imagine him to purposely hide himself from all who know him, for the purpose of—" 

"For the purpose of influencing me," exclaimed Mr. Watson, who, taking a stand upon his own vanity, traced every event in life from that one center, and resolutely declined to look at it from any other point of view. "For the purpose of influencing me. You know that we are estranged; I have cast him off entirely. He knew the inflexibility of my character; to a certain degree he was acquainted with me, and knew that all attempts at softening my decision, or moving me from the fixed purpose of my life, would fail. He therefore tried extraordinary means; he has kept out of the way in order to alarm me, and when after due time he discovers that he has not alarmed me, he will return to his old haunts. When he does so," said Mr. Watson, rising to sublimity, "I will not forgive him." 

William Watson delivered himself of these superb lines with a studied manner, that showed they had been carefully composed long ago. 

Sherlock Holmes sighed as he heard them. 

"Heaven grant that you may have an opportunity of saying this to your son, sir," he answered sadly. "But I fear that you will never see him again upon this earth. I have a great deal to say to you upon this—this sad subject, Mr. Watson; but I would rather say it to you alone," he added, glancing at the lady in the window. 

"My daughter knows my ideas upon this subject, Mr. Holmes," said William Watson; "there is no reason why she should not hear all you have to say. Miss Harriet Watson, Mr. Sherlock Holmes," he added, waving his hand majestically. 

The young lady bent her head in recognition of Sherlock's bow. 

"Let her hear it," he thought. "If she has so little feeling as to show no emotion upon such a subject, let her hear the worst I have to tell." 

There was a few minutes' pause, during which Sherlock took some papers from his pocket; among them the document which he had written immediately after John's disappearance. 

"I shall require all your attention, Mr. Watson," he said, "for that which I have to disclose to you is of a very painful nature. Your son was my very dear friend—dear to me for many reasons. Perhaps most of all dear, because I had known him and been with him through the great trouble of his life; and because he stood comparatively alone in the world—cast off by you who should have been his best friend, bereft of the only woman he had ever loved." 

"The daughter of a drunken pauper, whom he married in desperation after I cast him out," Mr. Watson remarked, grandly, seemingly forgetting about his own role in John’s disaster. 

"Had he died in his bed, as I sometimes thought he would," continued Sherlock Holmes, "of a broken heart, I should have mourned for him very sincerely, even though I had closed his eyes with my own hands, and had seen him laid in his quiet resting-place. I should have grieved for my old schoolfellow, for the companion who had been dear to me, and for the potential not fulfilled. But this grief would have been a very small one compared to that which I feel now, believing, as I do only too firmly, that my poor friend has been murdered." 

"Murdered!" 

The father and daughter simultaneously repeated the horrible word. The father's face changed to a ghastly duskiness of hue; the daughter's face dropped upon her clasped hands, and was never lifted again throughout the interview. 

"Mr. Holmes, you are mad!" exclaimed William Watson; "you are mad, or else you are commissioned by your friend to play upon my feelings. I protest against this proceeding as a conspiracy!" 

He was himself again as he said this. The blow had been a sharp one, but its effect had been momentary. 

"It is far from my wish to alarm you unnecessarily, sir," answered Sherlock. "Heaven grant that you may be right and I wrong. I pray for it, but I cannot think it—I cannot even hope it. I come to you simply to state to you plainly and dispassionately the circumstances which have aroused my suspicions, as is only right and decent. If you say those suspicions are foolish and unfounded, I have at least discharged my duty." 

Mr. William Watson seemed entirely unmoved by this appeal, but declared himself ready to listen to all that Sherlock might have to say. 

Sherlock Holmes drew his chair nearer to that of Mr. Watson, and commenced a minutely detailed account of all that had occurred to John from the time of his arrival in England to the hour of his disappearance, as well as all that had occurred since his disappearance in any way touching upon that particular subject. William Watson listened with demonstrative attention, now and then interrupting the speaker to ask some magisterial kind of question. Harriet Watson never once lifted her face from her clasped hands. 

The hands of the clock pointed to a quarter past eleven when Sherlock began his story. The clock struck twelve as he finished. 

He had carefully suppressed the Stamford name in relating the circumstances in which they had been concerned. 

"Now, sir," he said, when the story had been told, "I have told you all. Does this story influence you?" 

"It does not, in any way, turn me from my previous opinion," answered Mr. William Watson, with the unreasoning pride of an obstinate man. "I still think, as I thought before, that my son is alive, and that his disappearance is a conspiracy against myself. I decline to become the victim of that conspiracy." 

"And that is all you have to say?" asked Sherlock, solemnly. 

"Nothing more." 

"So be it, then!" exclaimed Sherlock, suddenly; "from this moment, I act only on my own behalf. John Watson has no family, saving myself. " 

He rose as he spoke, and took his hat from the table on which he had placed it. He looked at Harriet Watson. Her attitude had never changed since she had dropped her face upon her hands. "Good morning, Mr. Watson," he said, gravely. "God grant that you are right. God grant that I am wrong. But I fear a day will come when you will have reason to regret your apathy respecting the untimely fate of your only son." 

He bowed gravely to Mr. William Watson and to the lady, whose face was hidden by her hands. 

He lingered for a moment looking at Miss Watson, thinking that she would look up, that she would make some sign, or show some desire to detain him. 

Mr. Watson rang for the emotionless servant, who led Sherlock off to the hall-door with the solemnity of manner which would have been in perfect keeping had he been leading him to execution. 

"She is like her father," thought Mr. Holmes, as he glanced for the last time at the drooping head. "Poor John, you had need of me in this world, for you have had very few to love you." 

* * * * *

Sherlock Holmes found the driver asleep upon the box of his lumbering vehicle; he was very glad to welcome the return of his fare. The old white horse, who looked as if he had been foaled in the year in which the carriage had been built, and seemed, like the carriage, to have outlived the fashion, was as fast asleep as his master, and woke up with a jerk as Sherlock came down the stony flight of steps. 

The horse, roused by a smack of his driver's whip and a shake of the shabby reins, crawled off in a semi-somnambulent state; and Sherlock, with his hat very much over his eyes, thought of his missing friend.

How was it that with his father perpetually before his eyes, he had not grown up after the father's disagreeable model, to be a nuisance to his fellow-men? How was it? John Watson was a miracle in many ways, and the more Sherlock learned about the man, the truer this became, and the more keenly he felt his loss. 

The fly was crawling out of the gate of the plantation as he thought this, and he stood up in the vehicle to look back at the dreary fir-trees, the gravel paths, the smooth grass, and the great desolate-looking, red-brick mansion. 

He was startled by the appearance of a woman running, almost flying, along the carriage-drive by which he had come, and waving a handkerchief in her uplifted hand. 

He stared at this singular apparition for some moments in silent wonder before he was able to reduce his stupefaction into words. 

"Is it me the flying female wants?" he exclaimed, at last. "You'd better stop, perhaps," he added, to the flyman. "It is an age of eccentricity, an abnormal era of the world's history. She may want me. Very likely I left my pocket-handkerchief behind me, and Mr. Watson Sr. has sent this person with it. Perhaps I'd better get out and go and meet her. It's civil to send my handkerchief." 

Mr. Sherlock Holmes deliberately descended from the fly and walked slowly toward the hurrying female figure, which gained upon him rapidly. 

It was not until she came very near to him that he saw who she was. 

"Good Heaven!" he exclaimed, "it's Miss Harriet Watson!" 

It was Miss Watson, flushed and breathless, with a woolen shawl thrown over her head. 

Sherlock Holmes now saw her face clearly for the first time, and he saw that she was very handsome. She had eyes very like John's, a pale complexion (she had been flushed when she approached him, but the color faded away as she recovered her breath), regular features, with a mobility of expression which bore record of every change of feeling. He saw all this in a few moments, and he wondered only the more at the stoicism of her manner during his interview with Mr. Watson. There were no tears in her eyes, but they were bright with a feverish luster—terribly bright and dry—and he could see that her lips trembled as she spoke to him. 

"Miss Watson," he said, "what can I—why—" 

She interrupted him suddenly, catching at his wrist with her disengaged hand—she was holding her shawl in the other. 

"Oh, let me speak to you," she cried—"let me speak to you, or I shall go mad. I heard it all. I believe what you believe, and I shall go mad unless I can do something—something toward avenging his death." 

For a few moments Sherlock Holmes was too much bewildered to answer her. Of all things possible upon earth he had least expected to behold her thus. 

"Take my arm, Miss Watson," he said. "Pray calm yourself. Let us walk a little way back toward the house, and talk quietly. I would not have spoken as I did before you had I known—" 

"Had you known that I loved my brother?" she asked, quickly. "How should you know that I loved him? How should anyone think that I loved him, when I have never had power to give him a welcome beneath that roof, or a kindly word from his father? How should I dare to betray my love for him in that house when I knew that even a sister's affection would be turned to his disadvantage? You do not know my father, Mr. Holmes. I do. I knew that to intercede for John would have been to ruin his cause. I knew that to leave matters in my father's hands, and to trust to time, was my only chance of ever seeing that dear brother again. And I waited—waited patiently, always hoping for the best; for I knew that my father loved his only son. I see your contemptuous smile, Mr. Holmes, and I dare say it is difficult for a stranger to believe that underneath his affected stoicism my father conceals some degree of affection for his children—no very warm attachment perhaps, for he has always ruled his life by the strict law of duty. Stop," she said, suddenly, laying her hand upon his arm, and looking back through the straight avenue of pines; "I ran out of the house by the back way. Papa must not see me talking to you, Mr. Holmes, and he must not see the fly standing at the gate. Will you go into the high-road and tell the man to drive on a little way? I will come out of the plantation by a little gate further on, and meet you in the road." 

"But you will catch cold, Miss Watson," remonstrated Sherlock, looking at her anxiously, for he saw that she was trembling. "You are shivering now." 

"Not with cold," she answered. "I am thinking of my brother John. If you have any pity for the only sister of your lost friend, do what I ask you, Mr. Holmes. I must speak to you—I must speak to you—calmly, if I can." 

She put her hand to her head as if trying to collect her thoughts, and then pointed to the gate. Sherlock bowed and left her. He told the man to drive slowly toward the station, and walked on by the side of the tarred fence surrounding Mr. Watson' grounds. About a hundred yards beyond the principal entrance he came to a little wooden gate in the fence, and waited at it for Miss Watson. 

She joined him presently, with her shawl still over her head, and her eyes still bright and tearless. 

"Will you walk with me inside the plantation?" she said. "We might be observed on the high-road." 

He bowed, passed through the gate, and shut it behind him. 

When she took his offered arm he found that she was still trembling—trembling very violently. 

"Pray, pray calm yourself, Miss Watson," he said; "I may have been deceived in the opinion which I have formed; I may—" 

"No, no, no," she exclaimed, "you are not deceived. My brother has been murdered. Tell me the name of that woman—the woman whom you suspect of being concerned in his disappearance—in his murder." 

"That I cannot do until—" 

"Until when?" 

"Until I know that she is guilty." 

"You told my father that you would abandon all idea of discovering the truth—that you would rest satisfied to leave my brother's fate a horrible mystery never to be solved upon this earth; but you will not do so, Mr. Holmes—you will not be false to the memory of your friend. You will see vengeance done upon those who have destroyed him. I ask you to avenge my brother's untimely death. Will you do so? Yes or no?" 

"What if I answer no?" 

"Then I will do it myself," she exclaimed, looking at him with her bright brown eyes. "I myself will follow up the clue to this mystery; I will find this woman—though you refuse to tell me in what part of England my brother disappeared. I will travel from one end of the world to the other to find the secret of his fate, if you refuse to find it for me. I am of age; my own mistress; rich, for I have money left me by one of my aunts; I shall be able to employ those who will help me in my search, and I will make it to their interest to serve me well. Choose between the two alternatives, Mr. Holmes. Shall you or I find my brother's murderer?" 

He looked in her face, and saw that her resolution was the fruit of no transient womanish enthusiasm which would give way under the iron hand of difficulty. Her beautiful features, naturally statuesque in their noble outlines, seemed transformed into marble by the rigidity of her expression. The face in which he looked was the face of a woman whom death only could turn from her purpose. 

"I have grown up in an atmosphere of suppression," she said, quietly; "I have stifled and dwarfed the natural feelings of my heart, until they have become unnatural in their intensity; I have been allowed neither friends nor lovers; I have had only wine to dull the ache of it. My mother died when I was very young. My father has always been to me what you saw him to-day. I have had no one but my brother. All the love that my heart can hold has been centered upon him. Do you wonder, then, that when I hear that his young life has been ended by the hand of treachery, that I wish to see vengeance done upon the traitor? Oh, my God," she cried, suddenly clasping her hands, and looking up at the cold winter sky, "lead me to the murderer of my brother, and let mine be the hand to avenge his untimely death." 

Sherlock Holmes stood looking at her with awe-stricken admiration. She was indeed John’s like, in beauty and in character. "Miss Watson," said Sherlock, after a pause, "your brother shall not be unavenged. He shall not be forgotten. I do not think that any professional aid which you could procure would lead you as surely to the secret of this mystery as I can lead you, if you are patient and trust me." 

"I will trust you," she answered, "for I see that you will help me." 

Holmes nodded solemnly, and then hesitated. “Miss Watson,” he started, and then paused again. “It is unbecoming to me to pursue this question, I know, but I loved your brother very dearly, and mourn his loss most sincerely. Perhaps then, you can understand my curiosity about his early life. What is the nature of the breach between father and son? How could the most amiable man I’ve ever known so disappoint his own kin?” 

Harriet coloured, and the rose that bloomed in her cheek made her resemblance to her brother even more pronounced. 

Sherlock swallowed back the lump that formed in his throat, and looked away. 

“You must understand, sir,” she said by way of explanation, “that I loved my brother – I shall say, I love my brother, for the sentiment has not changed – and I would not ever speak disparagingly of him.” 

She paused, evidently carefully selecting the words which were to follow. “But upon my honour, sir,” she continued, “there was never anything to disparage. I shall relate to you the events that led to the falling-out, and you may decide for yourself; you are a just and kind man, if you were friends with John, and independent in your thinking. I shall place my faith in the love you bore for my brother, that you will hear this account with an open mind.” 

Here she stopped, and looked quite searchingly into Sherlock’s eyes – so much so that the man rather felt as if his soul was on the scale, being weighed against the white feather of Ma’at. At last, she nodded to herself, and carried on. 

“After the financial disaster that befell my father in John’s school days, the details of which you are already familiar with, sir, John – ever-dutiful John – returned to our family home to offer his assistance in whatever way he could. His thought was to make his way to India, and there to seek a better fortune, and restore our family to its previous position. 

“There was a terrible scene, sir, when my father heard of this plan. He positively forbade John from leaving the country, and told him he’d rather see him down a mine than abandoning us to ‘swan about’ in the colonies. 

“You must understand, sir, how low were John’s spirits at this time. He had sacrificed the most pressing dream of his life, the study of medicine, for the good of his family. He lost his school friends, his marriage prospects, and he lost you, sir – he felt it keenly, too, and spoke of you often. On top of this, our father had him trapped, or so he felt, in an existence of servitude and thankless labour. He had no confidante at all, for he would not burden me with his cares, willing as I was to share in his troubles. He had no one to look to for comfort, sir. No one at all.

“And so, you must not be surprised sir, as I do not suppose you will be, when I tell you that he accepted comfort where he found it offered, and took what pleasure he could in his cold and austere new life.

“He developed a very close –” she paused and looked at him intently – “I believe you understand what I mean when I say that it was a very close association, with the lad who had been our stable boy before our circumstances changed, and we were forced to dispense with most of our staff.”

At this revelation, which Holmes understood completely, the man made no outward reaction, but his heart kicked up a racing pace, and he felt as if a bodyshock of electricity had passed through him. 

To Miss Watson, however, he merely said, “I am gratified to say that your faith in my fair-mindedness is justified. This revelation is interesting to me (‘in the extreme,’ he privately added), but I fear… I fear to hear what happened next.” 

“Yes,” Miss Watson replied. “Your fear is also justified. He was a good lad, John’s friend. I cannot say that John was happy with him, but he was happier, and that meant much to a sister’s worried heart. My father found them one night, curled upon each other and sleeping peacefully in the eaves. I believe you can imagine the reaction of such a man. It was not a pleasant scene. John was disinherited completely, and forced to leave our family home that very night. The stable lad…” her lip trembled. “He was lucky to escape with his life, Mr. Holmes. My father is a very hard man.”

“Yes,” Sherlock replied, biting back the rage that was rising in his chest. “I can see that very clearly.”

There was a lull in their conversation as they passed a quiet intersection on the path. 

Miss Watson then continued, “My brother contrived to send me messages. My father would allow no communication between us, but I had a friend who served as an intermediary for our letters. Until that time, I had obeyed my father in all things, sir,” she said to him with defiant eyes, “but I could not abide the senseless loss of my dear brother.”

“Quite right, Miss Watson. Quite right,” Holmes murmured, but his mind was simultaneously racing ahead and remembering the past, and he only partially caught her words.

His feelings were roused, but chaotically so, and he latched onto the only practical thing he could think of.

"Have you any letters of your brother's, Miss Watson?" he asked. 

"Only two; the rest I destroyed for fear my father would discover them. One was written soon after his marriage, the other was written the night before he sailed for India." 

"Will you let me see them?" 

"Yes, I will send them to you if you will give me your address. You will write to me from time to time, will you not, to tell me whether you are approaching the truth? I shall be obliged to act secretly here, but I am going to leave home in two or three months, and I shall be perfectly free then to act as I please." 

"You are not going to leave England?" Sherlock asked. 

"Oh no! I am only going to pay a long-promised visit to some friends in Essex." 

Sherlock started so violently as Harriet Watson said this, that she looked suddenly at his face. The agitation visible there, betrayed a part of his secret. 

"My brother John disappeared in Essex," she said. 

He could not contradict her. 

"I am sorry you have discovered so much," he replied. "My position becomes every day more complicated, every day more painful. Good-bye." 

She gave him her hand mechanically, when he held out his; but it was cold as marble, and lay listlessly in his own, and fell like a log at her side when he released it. 

"Pray lose no time in returning to the house," he said earnestly. "I fear you will suffer from this morning's work." 

"Suffer!" she exclaimed, scornfully. "You talk to me of suffering, when the only creature in this world who ever loved me has been taken from it in the bloom of youth. What can there be for me henceforth but suffering? What is the cold to me?" she said, flinging back her shawl and baring her beautiful head to the bitter wind. "I would walk from here to London barefoot through the snow, and never stop by the way, if I could bring him back to life. What would I not do to bring him back? What would I not do?" 

The words broke from her in a wail of passionate sorrow; and clasping her hands before her face, she wept for the first time that day. The violence of her sobs shook her slender frame, and she was obliged to lean against the trunk of a tree for support. 

Sherlock looked at her with a tender compassion in his face; she was so like the friend whom he had loved and lost, that it was impossible for him to think of her as a stranger; impossible to remember that they had met that morning for the first time. He felt towards her a brotherly affection. 

"Pray, pray be calm," he said, clasping her hand: "hope even against hope. We may both be deceived; your brother may still live." 

"Oh! if it were so," she murmured, passionately; "if it could be so." 

"Let us try and hope that it may be so." 

"No," she answered, looking at him through her tears, "let us hope for nothing but revenge. Good-by, Mr. Holmes. Stop; your address." 

He gave her a card, which she put into the pocket of her dress. 

"I will send you John's letters," she said; "they may help you. Good-by." 

She left him half bewildered by the passionate energy of her manner, by her likeness to his dear friend. He watched her as she disappeared among the straight trunks of the fir-trees, and then walked slowly out of the plantation. 

"Heaven help those who stand between me and the secret," he thought, "for they will be sacrificed to the memory of John Watson." 

* * * * *

Sherlock Holmes took a ticket for the first train that left Wareham, and reached Waterloo Bridge an hour or two after dark. The snow, which had been hard and crisp in Dorsetshire, was a black and greasy slush in the Waterloo Road, thawed by the flaring lamps of the gin-palaces and the glaring gas in the butchers' shops. 

He shrugged his shoulders as he looked at the dingy streets through which the hansom carried him, the cab-man choosing—with that delicious instinct which seems innate in the drivers of hackney vehicles—all those dark and hideous thoroughfares utterly unknown to the ordinary pedestrian. 

Who has not felt, in the first madness of sorrow, an unreasoning rage against the mute propriety of chairs and tables, the stiff squareness of Turkey carpets, the unbending obstinacy of the outward apparatus of existence? We want to root up gigantic trees in a primeval forest, and to tear their huge branches asunder in our convulsive grasp; and the utmost that we can do for the relief of our passion is to knock over an easy-chair. So Holmes reflected, all that dark cab ride. 

“Madhouses are large and only too numerous,” he mused to himself. “Yet surely it is strange they are not larger, when we think of how many helpless wretches must beat their brains against this hopeless persistency of the orderly outward world, as compared with the storm and tempest, the riot and confusion within—when we remember how many minds must tremble upon the narrow boundary between reason and unreason, mad to-day and sane to-morrow, mad yesterday and sane to-day.” 

He had directed the cabman to drop him at the corner of Chancery Lane, and he ascended the brilliantly-lighted staircase leading to the dining-saloon of The London, and seated himself at one of the snug tables with a confused sense of emptiness and weariness, rather than any agreeable sensation of healthy hunger. He had come to the luxurious eating-house to dine, because it was absolutely necessary to eat something somewhere, and a great deal easier to get a very good dinner from Mr. Sawyer than a very mediocre one from Mrs. Hudson, whose mind ran in one narrow channel of chops and steaks. The solicitous waiter tried in vain to rouse poor Sherlock to a proper sense of the solemnity of the dinner question. He muttered something to the effect that the man might bring him anything he liked, and the friendly waiter, who knew Sherlock as a frequent guest at the little tables, went back to his master with a doleful face, to say that Mr. Holmes, from Figtree Court, was evidently out of spirits. Sherlock ate his dinner, and drank a pint of Moselle; but he had poor appreciation of the excellence of the viands or the delicate fragrance of the wine. The mental monologue still went on. John had spoken of him often to his family. John had taken a boy for a lover. That lover had not been Sherlock. John’s sister was wonderful; her character told him much of John’s. John’s father was monstrous. John had evidently loved his wife very much; enough to throw caution to the wind and wed when his own fortunes were so insecure. John had surely not loved Sherlock. The thoughts swirled round and round, unrelentingly. What, in God’s name, had Watson thought when Sherlock had kissed him?

Mr. Holmes pushed his hands through the thick luxuriance of his dark, wavy hair, and then buried his face in his hands for several minutes. Why had he ever succumbed to his mad impulse to kiss the fellow, and started himself down this insane road? But even so, he knew it was a fruitless question – he had loved John long before that fateful day.

Sherlock paid his bill and rewarded the waiter liberally. The young barrister was very willing to distribute his comfortable little income among the people who served him, for he carried his indifference to all things in the universe, even to the matter of pounds, shillings and pence. Perhaps he was rather exceptional in this, as you may frequently find that the philosopher who calls life an empty delusion is pretty sharp in the investment of his moneys, but this was not the case for Sherlock Holmes. 

The snug rooms in Figtree Court seemed dreary in their orderly quiet to Sherlock Holmes upon this particular evening. He had no inclination for his scientific pursuits. He took his favorite meerschaum and dropped into his favorite chair with a sigh. He knew that tonight would be an opium night, and he hoped it would be a dreamless one.

* * * * *

The next day's post brought him a letter in a firm but feminine hand, which was strange to him. He found the little packet lying on his breakfast-table, beside the warm French roll wrapped in a napkin by Mrs. Hudson's careful hands. He contemplated the envelope for some minutes before opening it—not in any wonder as to his correspondent, for the letter bore the postmark of Grange Heath, and he knew that there was only one person who was likely to write to him from that obscure village, but in that lazy dreaminess which was a part of his character. 

"From Harriet Watson," he murmured slowly, as he looked critically at the clearly-shaped letters of his name and address. "Yes, from Harriet Watson, most decidedly; I recognized a feminine resemblance to poor John's hand; neater than his, and more decided than his, but very like, very like." The familiar ache, acute after the revelations of the previous day, bloomed stronger in his chest at the thought.

He turned the letter over and examined the seal, which bore his friend's familiar crest. 

He tore open the envelope with a sigh of resignation. It contained nothing but John's two letters, and a few words written on the flap: "I send the letters; please preserve and return them—H.W." 

The first letter told nothing of the writer's life except his determination of starting for a new world, to redeem the fortunes that had been ruined in the old. The second letter, written almost immediately after John's marriage, contained a full description of his wife—such a description as a man could only write within three weeks of a love match—a description in which every feature was minutely catalogued, every grace of form or beauty of expression fondly dwelt upon, every charm of manner lovingly depicted. 

Sherlock Holmes read the letter three times before he laid it down. He sat, wrestling with his anguish, but without power to keep it down, and found his face was wet. 

"If John could have known for what a purpose this description would serve when he wrote it," thought the young barrister, "surely his hand would have fallen paralyzed by horror, and powerless to shape one syllable of these tender words."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Sunday Summer Serial: thanks to redscudery for the brilliant idea!
> 
> Thursday Teasers posted on my Tumblr (http://doctornerdington.tumblr.com).
> 
> Comments appreciated.
> 
> Next week: "Retrograde Investigation."


	9. Retrograde Investigation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is is a posthumous collaboration with Mary Elizabeth Braddon; I've adapted her novel Lady Audley's Secret, and retained much of her original structure and language. ALL CREDIT TO HER.
> 
> Current rating: mature. This chapter: all audiences. (Will change to explicit by the end -- I PROMISE! Smut is on the horizon!)
> 
> Braddon's novel was originally published serially, as this adaptation is. Chapter updates every Sunday throughout the summer.

The dreary London January dragged its dull length slowly out. The last slender records of Christmas time were swept away, and Sherlock Holmes still lingered in town—still spent his lonely evenings in his quiet sitting-room in Figtree Court—still wandered listlessly in the Temple Gardens on sunny mornings. Elderly benchers indulged in facetious observations upon the young man's pale face and moody manner. They suggested the probability of some unhappy attachment, some feminine ill-usage as the secret cause of the change. They told him to be of good cheer, and invited him to supper-parties. But he seemed to have lost all taste for companionship, all sympathy with his old pleasures and occupations. Sherlock had no inclination for the wine-bibbing and the punch-making. 

Ever since John’s disappearance, he had felt the weight of a dark cloud brooding above Sir Michael Stamford’s house, and knew that it was his hand which was to give the signal for the thunder-clap, and the tempest that was to ruin that noble life. And yet, since his secret conversation with Harriet Watson, his depression had only intensified, for the new knowledge he had gained about John had thrown him into a renewed frenzy of grief, mortification, and longing. He had had a chance, a very good chance, he judged, to find a measure of happiness with his friend, and to make John, in turn, happy – and he had not known until it was far, far too late! He cursed Chance, Fate, Providence, and himself in equal measure, and burned with a constant fever of regret. 

He took cocaine during the days, desperately stimulating his mind to remember and re-live every instant of his time with John in a dizzying mental exercise that left him wrung out, but unable to sleep; he turned to opium during the endless nights, and dreamed fitful dreams. Some joyful nights he was visited by a loving and affectionate John, a John who embraced and caressed him, who understood him, and Sherlock felt, for the first time in his life, in perfect sympathy with another. These nights were worth the price, although it was steep indeed: more often, he dreamed of the horrors of John’s last minutes on this earth: had he been alone? In pain? Afraid? Uncomforted? 

He forgot to eat, grew thinner and paler with each passing day, and caused Mrs. Hudson no end of worry. 

He heard sometimes from Sir Michael, sometimes from Molly. The young lady's letter rarely contained more than a few curt lines informing him that her papa was well; and that Lady Stamford was in very high spirits, amusing herself in her usual frivolous manner, and with her usual disregard for other people. 

Toward the close of February, Sherlock received a letter from Molly, which hurried him one step further forward toward his destiny, by causing him to return to the house from which he had become in a manner exiled at the instigation of Sir Michael’s wife. 

"Papa is very ill," Molly wrote; "not dangerously ill, thank God; but confined to his room by an attack of low fever which has succeeded a violent cold. Come and see him, Sherlock, if you have any regard for your nearest friends. He has spoken about you several times; and I know he will be glad to have you with him. Come at once, but say nothing about this letter. 

“From, your affectionate MOLLY." 

A sick and deadly terror chilled Sherlock Holmes's heart, as he read this letter—a vague yet hideous fear, which he dared not shape into any definite form. 

"Have I done right?" he thought, in the first agony of this new horror—"have I done right to tamper with justice; and to keep the secret of my suspicions and shield this household from sorrow and disgrace until I find irrefutable evidence? What shall I do if I find him ill, very ill, dying perhaps, dying upon her breast! What shall I do?" 

One course lay clear before him; and the first step of that course was a rapid journey to Stamford Court. He packed his portmanteau, jumped into a cab, and reached the railway station within an hour of his receipt of Molly's letter, which had come by the afternoon post. 

The dim village lights flickered faintly through the growing dusk when Sherlock reached Stamford. He left his portmanteau with the station-master, and walked at a leisurely pace through the quiet lanes that led away to the still loneliness of the Court. The over-arching trees stretched their leafless branches above his head, bare and weird in the dusky light. A low moaning wind swept across the flat meadow land, and tossed those rugged branches hither and thither against the dark gray sky. 

A mournful presentiment crept into Sherlock Holmes's heart as he drew nearer to the Court. Every changing outline in the landscape was familiar to him; every bend of the trees; every caprice of the untrammeled branches; every undulation in the bare hawthorn hedge, broken by dwarf horse-chestnuts, stunted willows, blackberry and hazel bushes. 

Sir Michael had been a second father to the young man, a generous and noble friend, a grave and earnest adviser. Grateful affection for this was so much a part of Holmes himself, that it seldom found an outlet in words, and a stranger would never have fathomed the depth of feeling which lay, a deep and powerful current, beneath the stagnant surface of the barrister's character. 

"What would become of this place if he were to die?" he thought, and he drew nearer to the ivied archway, and the still water-pools, coldly gray in the twilight. "And what would become of me?" 

Only one solitary light was visible in the long irregular range of windows facing the archway, as Sherlock passed under the gloomy shade of the rustling ivy, restless in the chill moaning of the wind. He recognized that lighted window as the large oriel in Sir Michael’s room. When last he had looked at the old house it had been gay with visitors, every window glittering like a low star in the dusk; now, dark and silent, it faced the winter's night like some dismal baronial habitation, deep in a woodland solitude. 

The man who opened the door to the unlooked-for visitor, brightened as he recognized his master's young friend. 

"Sir Michael will be cheered up a bit, sir, by the sight of you," he said, as he ushered Sherlock Holmes into the fire-lit library, which seemed desolate by reason of the baronet's easy-chair standing empty on the broad hearth-rug. "Shall I bring you some dinner here, sir, before you go up-stairs?" the servant asked. "My lady and Miss Stamford have dined early during my master's illness, but I can bring you anything you would please to take, sir." 

"I'll take nothing until I have seen Sir Michael," Sherlock answered, hurriedly; "that is to say, if I can see him at once. He is not too ill to receive me, I suppose?" he added, anxiously. 

"Oh, no, sir—not too ill; only a little low, sir. This way, if you please." 

He conducted Sherlock up the short flight of shallow oaken stairs to the octagon chamber in which John Watson had sat long five months before, staring absently at my lady's portrait. The picture was finished now, and hung in the post of honor opposite the window, amidst Claudes, Poussins and Wouvermans, whose less brilliant hues were killed by the vivid coloring of the modern artist. The bright face looked out of that tangled glitter of golden hair, in which the Pre-Raphaelites delight, with a mocking smile, as Sherlock paused for a moment to glance at the well-remembered picture. Two or three moments afterward he had passed through my lady's boudoir and dressing-room and stood upon the threshold of Sir Michael's room. The baronet lay in a quiet sleep, his arm laying outside the bed, and his strong hand clasped in his young wife's delicate fingers. Molly sat in a low chair beside the broad open hearth, on which the huge logs burned fiercely in the frosty atmosphere. 

Sherlock paused upon the threshold, fearful of awaking Sir Michael. The two ladies had heard his step, cautious though he had been, and lifted their heads to look at him. My lady's face, quietly watching the sick man, had worn an anxious earnestness which made it only more beautiful; but the same face recognizing Sherlock Holmes, faded from its delicate brightness, and looked scared and wan in the lamplight. 

"Mr. Holmes!" she cried, in a faint, tremulous voice. 

"Hush!" whispered Molly, with a warning gesture; "you will wake papa. How good of you to come, Sherlock," she added, in the same whispered tones, beckoning him to take an empty chair near the bed. 

The young man seated himself in the indicated seat at the bottom of the bed, and opposite to my lady, who sat close beside the pillows. He looked long and earnestly at the face of the sleeper; still longer, still more earnestly at the face of Lady Stamford, which was slowly recovering its natural hues. 

"He has not been very ill, has he?" Sherlock asked, in the same key as that in which Molly had spoken. 

My lady answered the question. 

"Oh, no, not dangerously ill," she said, without taking her eyes from her husband's face; "but still we have been anxious, very, very anxious." 

Sherlock never relaxed his scrutiny of that pale face. 

"She shall look at me," he thought; "I will make her meet my eyes, and I will read her as I have read her before. She shall know how useless her artifices are with me." 

He paused for a few minutes before he spoke again. The regular breathing of the sleeper the ticking of a gold hunting-watch at the head of the bed, and the crackling of the burning logs, were the only sounds that broke the stillness. 

"I have no doubt you have been anxious, Lady Stamford," Sherlock said, after a pause, fixing my lady's eyes as they wandered furtively to his face. "There is no one to whom Sir Michael’s life can be of more value than to you. Your happiness, your prosperity, your safety depend alike upon his existence." 

The whisper in which he uttered these words was too low to reach the other side of the room, where Molly sat. 

Mary Stamford's eyes met those of the speaker with some gleam of triumph in their light. 

"I know that," she said. "Those who strike me must strike through him." 

She pointed to the sleeper as she spoke, still looking at Sherlock Holmes. She defied him with her blue eyes, their brightness intensified by the triumph in their glance. She defied him with her quiet smile—a smile of fatal beauty, full of lurking significance and mysterious meaning—the smile which the artist had exaggerated in his portrait of her. 

Sherlock turned away from the lovely face, and shaded his eyes with his hand; putting a barrier between my lady and himself; a screen which baffled her penetration and provoked her curiosity. Was he still watching her or was he thinking? And of what was he thinking? 

Sherlock had been seated at the bedside for upward of an hour before Sir Michael awoke. The baronet was delighted at his coming. 

"It was very good of you to come to me, Sherlock," he said. "I have been thinking of you a good deal since I have been ill. You and Mary must be good friends, you know, Sherlock; and you must learn to think of her almost as an aunt, sir; though she is young and beautiful; and—and—you understand, eh?" 

Sherlock grasped Sir Michael’s hand, but he looked down as he answered: "I do understand you, sir," he said, quietly; "and I give you my word of honor that I am steeled against my lady's fascinations. She knows that as well as I do." 

Mary Stamford made a little grimace with her pretty little lips. "Bah, you silly Sherlock," she exclaimed; "you take everything au serieux. If I had concerns, it was only in my fear of other people's foolish gossip; not from any—" 

She hesitated for a moment, and escaped any conclusion to her sentence by the timely intervention of Mr. Dawson, the local physician and her late employer, who entered the room upon his evening visit while she was speaking. 

He felt the patient's pulse; asked two or three questions; pronounced the baronet to be steadily improving; exchanged a few commonplace remarks with Molly and Lady Stamford, and prepared to leave the room. Sherlock rose and accompanied him to the door. 

"I will light you to the staircase," he said, taking a candle from one of the tables, and lighting it at the lamp. 

"No, no, Mr. Holmes, pray do not trouble yourself," expostulated the surgeon; "I know my way very well indeed." 

Sherlock insisted, and the two men left the room together. As they entered the octagon ante-chamber the barrister paused and shut the door behind him. 

"Will you see that the door is closed, Mr. Dawson?" he said, pointing to that which opened upon the staircase. "I wish to have a few moments' private conversation with you." 

"With much pleasure," replied the physician, complying with Sherlock's request; "but if you are at all alarmed about Sir Michael, Mr. Holmes, I can set your mind at rest. There is no occasion for the least uneasiness. Had his illness been at all serious I should have telegraphed immediately." 

"I am sure that you would have done your duty, sir," answered Sherlock, gravely. "But I am not going to speak of Sir Michael. I wish to ask you two or three questions about another person." 

"Indeed." 

"The person who once lived in your family as Miss Mary Morstan, the person who is now Lady Stamford." 

Mr. Dawson looked up with an expression of surprise upon his quiet face. 

"Pardon me, Mr. Holmes," he answered; "you can scarcely expect me to answer any questions about Sir Michael’s wife without his express permission. I can understand no motive which can prompt you to ask such questions—no worthy motive, at least." He looked severely at the young man, as much as to say: "You have been falling in love with her, and you want to make me a go-between in some treacherous flirtation; but it won't do, sir, it won't do. 

"I always respected the lady as Miss Morstan, sir," he continued, "and I esteem her doubly as Lady Stamford—not on account of her altered position, but because she is the wife of one of the noblest men in Christendom." 

"You cannot respect Sir Michael or his honor more sincerely than I do," answered Sherlock. "I have no unworthy motive for the questions I am about to ask; and you must answer them." 

"Must!" echoed Mr. Dawson, indignantly. 

"Yes, you are his friend. It was at your house he met the woman who is now his wife. She called herself an orphan, I believe, and enlisted his pity as well as his admiration in her behalf. She told him that she stood alone in the world, did she not?—without a friend or relative. This was all I could ever learn of her antecedents." 

"What reason have you to wish to know more?" asked the surgeon. 

"A very terrible reason," answered Sherlock Holmes. "For some months past I have struggled with doubts and suspicions which have embittered my life. They have grown stronger every day; and they will not be set at rest by the commonplace sophistries and the shallow arguments with which men try to deceive themselves rather than believe that which of all things upon earth they most fear to believe. I do not think that the woman who now bears the Stamford name is worthy of it. I may wrong her. Heaven grant that it is so. But if I do, the fatal chain of circumstantial evidence never yet linked itself so closely about an innocent person. I wish to set my doubts at rest or—or to confirm my fears. There is but one manner in which I can do this. I must trace the life of Lady Stamford backward, minutely and carefully, from this night to a period of six years ago. This is the twenty-fourth of February, 18--. I want to know every record of her life between to-night and five years ago." 

"And your motive is a worthy one?" 

"Yes, I wish to clear her from a very dreadful suspicion." 

"Which exists only in your mind?" 

"And in the mind of one other person." 

"May I ask who that person is?" 

"No, Mr. Dawson," answered Sherlock, decisively; "I cannot reveal anything more than what I have already told you. I repeat once more that I must know the history of Mary Morstan's life. If you refuse to help me to the small extent in your power, I will find others who will help me. Painful as it would become, I will ask Sir Michael for the information which you would withhold, rather than be baffled in the first step of my investigation." 

Mr. Dawson was silent for some minutes. 

"I cannot express how much you have astonished and alarmed me, Mr. Holmes." he said. "I can tell you so little about Lady Stamford's antecedents, that it would be mere obstinacy to withhold the small amount of information I possess. I have always considered her to be one of the most amiable of women. I cannot bring myself to think her otherwise. It would be an uprooting of one of the strongest convictions of my life were I compelled to think her otherwise. You wish to follow her life backward five years from the present hour?" 

"I do." 

"She was married to Sir Michael last June twelvemonth. She had lived in my house a little more than thirteen months." 

"And she came to you—" 

"From a school at Brompton, a school kept by a lady of the name of Vincent. It was Mrs. Vincent's strong recommendation that induced me to receive Miss Morstan into my family without any more special knowledge of her antecedents." 

"Did you see this Mrs. Vincent?" 

"I did not. I advertised for a governess, and Miss Morstan answered my advertisement. In her letter she referred me to Mrs. Vincent, the proprietress of a school in which she was then residing as junior teacher. My time is always so fully occupied, that I was glad to escape the necessity of a day's loss in going from Stamford to London to inquire about the young lady's qualifications. I looked for Mrs. Vincent's name in the directory, found it, and concluded that she was a responsible person, and wrote to her. Her reply was perfectly satisfactory;—Miss Mary Morstan was assiduous and conscientious; as well as fully qualified for the situation I offered. I accepted this reference, and I had no cause to regret what may have been an indiscretion. And now, Mr. Holmes, I have told you all that I have the power to tell." 

"Will you be so kind as to give me the address of this Mrs. Vincent?" asked Sherlock, taking out his pocketbook. 

"Certainly; she was then living at No. 9 Crescent Villas, Brompton." 

"Ah, to be sure," muttered Mr. Holmes, a recollection of last September flashing suddenly back upon him as the surgeon spoke. 

"Crescent Villas—yes, I have heard the address before from Lady Stamford herself. This Mrs. Vincent telegraphed to her early in last September. She was ill—dying, I believe—and sent for my lady; but had removed from her old house and was not to be found." 

"Indeed! I never heard Lady Stamford mention the circumstance." 

"Perhaps not. It occurred while I was down here. Thank you, Mr. Dawson, for the information you have so kindly and honestly given me. It takes me back two and a-half years in the history of my lady's life; but I have still a blank to fill up before I can exonerate her from my terrible suspicion. Good evening." 

Sherlock shook hands with Mr. Dawson and returned to Sir Michael’s room. He had been away about a quarter of an hour. Sir Michael had fallen asleep once more, and my lady's loving hands had lowered the heavy curtains and shaded the lamp by the bedside. Molly and her father's wife were taking tea in Lady Stamford's boudoir, the room next to the antechamber in which Sherlock and Mr. Dawson had been seated. 

Lady Mary Stamford looked up from her occupation among the fragile china cups and watched Sherlock rather anxiously as he walked softly to Sir Michael’s room and back again to the boudoir. She looked very pretty and innocent, seated behind the graceful group of delicate opal china and glittering silver. The starry diamonds upon her white fingers flashed hither and thither among the tea-things, and she bent her pretty head over the marvelous Indian tea-caddy of sandal-wood and silver, with as much earnestness as if life held no higher purpose than the infusion of Bohea. 

"You'll take a cup of tea with us, Mr. Holmes?" she asked, pausing with the teapot in her hand to look up at Sherlock, who was standing near the door. 

"If you please." 

"But you have not dined, perhaps? Shall I ring and tell them to bring you something a little more substantial than biscuits and transparent bread and butter?" 

"No, thank you, Lady Stamford. I took some lunch before I left town. I'll trouble you for nothing but a cup of tea." 

He seated himself at the little table and looked across it at Molly, who sat with a book in her lap, and had the air of being very much absorbed by its pages. The bright brunette complexion had lost its glowing crimson, and the animation of the young lady's manner was suppressed—on account of her father's illness, no doubt, Sherlock thought. 

"Molly, my dear," the barrister said, after a very leisurely contemplation of her, "you're not looking well." 

Miss Stamford shrugged her shoulders, but did not condescend to lift her eyes from her book. 

"Perhaps not," she answered, contemptuously. "Nor are you. What does it matter? I'm growing a philosopher of your school, Sherlock Holmes. What does it matter? Who cares whether I am well or ill?" 

"What a spitfire she is," thought the barrister. He always knew Molly was angry with him when she addressed him as "Sherlock Holmes." 

"You needn't pitch into a fellow because he asks you a civil question, Molly," he said, reproachfully. "As to nobody caring about your health, that's nonsense. I care." Miss Stamford looked up with a bright smile. "And… Sir Gregory Lestrade cares." Miss Stamford returned to her book with a frown. 

"What are you reading there, Molly?" Sherlock asked, after a pause, during which he had sat thoughtfully stirring his tea. 

"Changes and Chances." 

"A novel?" 

"Yes." 

"Who is it by?" 

"The author of Follies and Faults," answered Molly, still pursuing her study of the romance upon her lap. 

"Is it interesting?" 

Miss Stamford pursed up her mouth and shrugged her shoulders. 

"Not particularly," she said. 

"Then I think you might have better manners than to read it while your friend is sitting opposite you," observed Mr. Holmes, with some gravity, "especially as he has only come to pay you a flying visit, and will be off to-morrow morning." 

"To-morrow morning!" exclaimed my lady, looking up suddenly. 

Though the look of joy upon Lady Stamford's face was as brief as a flash of lightning on a summer sky, it was not unperceived by Sherlock. 

"Yes," he said; "I shall be obliged to run up to London to-morrow on business, but I shall return the next day, if you will allow me, Lady Stamford, and stay here till Sir Michael recovers." 

"But you are not seriously alarmed about him, are you?" asked my lady, anxiously. "You do not think him very ill?" 

"No," answered Sherlock. "Thank Heaven, I think there is not the slightest cause for apprehension." 

My lady sat silent for a few moments, looking at the empty teacups with a prettily thoughtful face—a face grave with the innocent seriousness of a musing child. 

"But you were closeted such a long time with Mr. Dawson, just now," she said, after this brief pause. "I was quite alarmed at the length of your conversation. Were you talking of Sir Michael all the time?" 

"No; not all the time." 

My lady looked down at the teacups once more. 

"Why, what could you find to say to Mr. Dawson, or he to say to you?" she asked, after another pause. "You are almost strangers to each other." 

"Suppose Mr. Dawson wished to consult me about some law business." 

"Was it that?" cried Lady Stamford, eagerly. 

"It would be rather unprofessional to tell you if it were so, my lady," answered Sherlock, gravely. 

My lady bit her lip, and relapsed into silence. Molly threw down her book, and watched Sherlock’s preoccupied face. He talked to her now and then for a few minutes, but it was evidently an effort to him to arouse himself from his reverie. 

"Upon my word, Sherlock Holmes, you are a very agreeable companion," exclaimed Molly at length, her rather limited stock of patience quite exhausted by two or three of these abortive attempts at conversation. "Perhaps the next time you come to the Court you will be good enough to bring your mind with you. By your present inanimate appearance, I should imagine that you had left your intellect, such as it is, somewhere in the Temple. You were never particularly sociable, but latterly you have really grown almost unendurable. I suppose you are in love, Mr. Holmes, and are thinking of the honored object of your affections." 

He was, in fact, thinking of John Watson's uplifted face, sublime and unutterably beautiful when Sherlock had kissed him in this very room, many months ago – but he could hardly tell this to Molly. Here he was in Essex; in the little village from which he firmly believed John Watson had never departed. He was on the spot at which all record of his friend's life ended as suddenly as a story ends when the reader shuts the book. And could he withdraw now from the investigation in which he found himself involved? Could he stop now? For any consideration? No; a thousand times no! Not with the image of that face imprinted on his mind. 

* * * * *

Sherlock left Stamford the next morning by an early train, and reached Shoreditch a little after nine o'clock. He did not return to his chambers, but called a cab and drove straight to Crescent Villas, West Brompton. He knew that he should fail in finding the lady he went to seek at this address, as Sir Michael had failed a few months before, but he thought it possible to obtain some clue to the schoolmistress' new residence, in spite of Sir Michael's ill-success. 

"Mrs. Vincent was in a dying state, according to the telegraphic message," Sherlock thought. "If I do find her, I shall at least succeed in discovering whether that message was genuine." 

He found Crescent Villas after some difficulty. But having at last succeeded in reaching his destination, Mr. Holmes alighted from the cab, directed the driver to wait for him at a certain corner, and set out upon his voyage of discovery. 

He inquired for Mrs. Vincent at the number which Mr. Dawson had given him. The maid who opened the door had never heard that lady's name; but after going to inquire of her mistress, she returned to tell Sherlock that Mrs. Vincent had lived there, but that she had left two months before the present occupants had entered the house, "and missus has been here for a year," the girl added emphatically. 

"But you cannot tell where she went on leaving here?" Sherlock asked, despondingly. 

"No, sir; missus says she believes the lady failed, and that she left sudden like, and didn't want her address to be known in the neighborhood." 

Mr. Holmes felt himself at a standstill once more. If Mrs. Vincent had left the place in debt, she had no doubt scrupulously concealed her whereabouts. There was little hope, then, of learning her address from the tradespeople; and yet, on the other hand, it was just possible that some of her sharpest creditors might have made it their business to discover the defaulter's retreat. 

He looked about him for the nearest shops, and found a baker's, a stationer's, and a fruiterer's a few paces from the Crescent. Three empty-looking, pretentious shops, with plate-glass windows, and a hopeless air of gentility. 

He stopped at the baker's, who called himself a pastrycook and confectioner."She must have bought bread," Sherlock thought, as he deliberated before the baker's shop; "and she is likely to have bought it at the handiest place. I'll try the baker." 

The baker was standing behind his counter, disputing the items of a bill with a shabby-genteel young woman. He did not trouble himself to attend to Sherlock Holmes until he had settled the dispute, but he looked up as he was receipting the bill, and asked the barrister what he pleased to want. 

"Can you tell me the address of a Mrs. Vincent, who lived recently at No. 9 Crescent Villas?" Mr. Holmes inquired, mildly. 

"No, I can't," answered the baker, growing very red in the face, and speaking in an unnecessarily loud voice; "and what's more, I wish I could. That lady owes me upward of eleven pound for bread, and it's rather more than I can afford to lose. If anybody can tell me where she lives, I shall be much obliged to 'em for so doing." 

Sherlock Holmes shrugged his shoulders and wished the man good-morning. He felt that his discovery of the lady's whereabouts would involve more trouble than he had expected. He might have looked for Mrs. Vincent's name in the Post-Office directory, but he thought it scarcely likely that a lady who was on such uncomfortable terms with her creditors, would afford them so easy a means of ascertaining her residence. 

"If the baker can't find her, how should I find her?" he thought, despairingly. 

Mr. Holmes abandoned himself to gloomy reflections as he walked slowly back toward the corner at which he had left the cab. About half-way between the baker's shop and this corner he was arrested by hearing a woman's step close at his side, and a woman's voice asking him to stop. He turned and found himself face to face with the shabbily-dressed woman whom he had left settling her account with the baker. 

"Can I do anything for you, ma'am?” he asked vaguely. “Does Mrs. Vincent owe you money, too?" 

"Yes, sir," the woman answered, with a semi-genteel manner which corresponded with the shabby gentility of her dress. "Mrs. Vincent is in my debt; but it isn't that, sir. I—I want to know, please, what your business may be with her—because—because—" 

"You can give me her address if you choose, ma'am. That's what you mean to say, isn't it?" 

The woman hesitated a little, looking rather suspiciously at Sherlock. 

"You're not connected with—with the tally business, are you, sir?" she asked, after considering Mr. Holmes's personal appearance for a few moments. 

"The what, ma'am?" asked the young barrister, staring aghast at his questioner. 

"I'm sure I beg your pardon, sir," exclaimed the little woman, seeing that she had made some awful mistake. "I thought you might have been, you know. Some of the gentlemen who collect for the tally shops do dress so very handsome; and I know Mrs. Vincent owes a good deal of money." 

Sherlock Holmes laid his hand upon the speaker's arm. 

"My dear madam," he said, "I want to know nothing of Mrs. Vincent's affairs. So far from being concerned in what you call the tally business, I have not the remotest idea what you mean by that expression. You may mean a political conspiracy; you may mean some new species of taxes. Mrs. Vincent does not owe me any money, however badly she may stand with that awful-looking baker. I never saw her in my life; but I wish to see her to-day for the simple purpose of asking her a few very plain questions about a young lady who once resided in her house. If you know where Mrs. Vincent lives and will give me her address, you will be doing me a great favor." 

He took out his card-case and handed a card to the woman, who examined the slip of pasteboard anxiously before she spoke again. 

"I'm sure you look and speak like a gentleman, sir," she said, after a brief pause, "and I hope you will excuse me if I've seemed mistrustful like; but poor Mrs. Vincent has had dreadful difficulties, and I'm the only person hereabouts that she's trusted with her addresses. I'm a dressmaker, sir, and I've worked for her for upward of ten years, and though she doesn't pay me regular, you know, sir, she gives me a little money on account now and then, and I get on as well as I can. I may tell you where she lives, then, sir? You haven't deceived me, have you?" 

"On my honor, no." 

"Well, then sir," said the dressmaker, dropping her voice as if she thought the pavement beneath her feet, or the iron railings before the houses by her side, might have ears to hear her, "it's Acacia Cottage, Peckham Grove. I took a dress there yesterday for Mrs. Vincent." 

"Thank you," said Sherlock, writing the address in his pocketbook. "I am very much obliged to you, and you may rely upon it, Mrs. Vincent shall not suffer any inconvenience through me." 

He lifted his hat, bowed to the little dressmaker, and turned back to the cab. 

"I have beaten the baker, at any rate," he thought ruefully. "Now for the second stage, traveling backward, in my lady's life." 

The drive from Brompton to the Peckham Road was a very long one, and between Crescent Villas and Acacia Cottage, Sherlock Holmes had ample leisure for reflection. He thought of Sir Michael, lying weak and ill in the oak-room at Stamford Court. He thought of the beautiful blue eyes watching Sir Michael's slumbers; the soft, white hands tending on his waking moments; the low musical voice soothing his loneliness, cheering and consoling his declining years. What a pleasant picture it might have been, had he been able to look upon it ignorantly, seeing no more than others saw, looking no further than a stranger could look. But with the black cloud which he saw brooding over it, what an arch mockery, what a diabolical delusion it seemed. 

Acacia Cottage was much lower in the social scale than Crescent Villas, and the small maid-servant who came to the low wooden gate and parleyed with Mr. Holmes, was evidently well used to the encounter of relentless creditors across the same feeble barricade. 

She murmured the familiar domestic fiction of the uncertainty regarding her mistress's whereabouts; and told Sherlock that if he would please to state his name and business, she would go and see if Mrs. Vincent was at home. 

Mr. Holmes produced a card, and wrote in pencil under his own name: "a connection of the former Miss Morstan." 

He directed the small servant to carry his card to her mistress, and quietly awaited the result. 

The servant returned in about five minutes with the key of the gate. Her mistress was at home, she told Sherlock as she admitted him, and would be happy to see the gentleman. 

The square parlor into which Sherlock was ushered bore in every scrap of ornament, in every article of furniture, the unmistakable stamp of that species of poverty which is most comfortless because it is never stationary. 

The room which Sherlock Holmes surveyed was furnished with the shabbier scraps snatched from the ruin which had overtaken the imprudent schoolmistress in Crescent Villas. A cottage piano, a chiffonier, six sizes too large for the room, and dismally gorgeous in gilded moldings that were chipped and broken; a slim-legged card-table, placed in the post of honor, formed the principal pieces of furniture. 

The green-baize covered card-table was adorned with gaudily-bound annuals or books of beauty, placed at right angles; but Sherlock Holmes did not avail himself of these literary distractions. He seated himself upon one of the rickety chairs, and waited patiently for the advent of the schoolmistress. He could hear the hum of half-a-dozen voices in a room near him, and the jingling harmonies of a set of variations in Deh Conte, upon a piano, whose every wire was evidently in the last stage of attenuation. 

He had waited for about a quarter of an hour, when the door was opened, and a lady, very much dressed, and with the setting sunlight of faded beauty upon her face, entered the room. 

"Mr. Holmes, I presume," she said, motioning to Sherlock to reseat himself, and placing herself in an easy-chair opposite to him. "You will pardon me, I hope, for detaining you so long; my duties—" 

"It is I who should apologize for intruding upon you," Sherlock answered, politely; "but my motive for calling upon you is a very serious one, and must plead my excuse. You remember the lady whose name I wrote upon my card?" 

"Perfectly." 

"May I ask how much you know of that lady's history since her departure from your house?" 

"Very little. In point of fact, scarcely anything at all. Miss Morstan, I believe, obtained a situation in the family of a surgeon resident in Essex. Indeed, it was I who recommended her to that gentleman. I have never heard from her since she left me." 

"Never? May I ask if you sent a telegraphic dispatch to Miss Morstan early in last September, stating that you were dangerously ill, and that you wished to see her?" 

Mrs. Vincent smiled at her visitor's question. 

"I had no occasion to send such a message," she said; "I have never been seriously ill in my life." 

Sherlock Holmes paused before he asked any further questions, and scrawled a few penciled words in his note-book. 

"If I ask you a few straightforward questions about Miss Mary Morstan, madam," he said. "Will you do me the favor to answer them without asking my motive in making such inquiries?" 

"Most certainly," replied Mrs. Vincent. "I know nothing to Miss Morstan's disadvantage, and have no justification for making a mystery of the little I do know." 

"Then will you tell me at what date the young lady first came to you?" 

Mrs. Vincent smiled and shook her head. She had a pretty smile—the frank smile of a woman who had been admired, and who has too long felt the certainty of being able to please, to be utterly subjugated by any worldly misfortune. 

"It's not the least use to ask me, Mr. Holmes," she said. "I'm the most careless creature in the world; I never did, and never could remember dates. I haven't the remotest idea when Miss Morstan came to me, although I know it was ages ago, for it was the very summer I had my peach-colored silk. But we must consult Donovan—Donovan is sure to be right." 

Mrs. Vincent rung the bell, which was answered by the maid-servant who had admitted Sherlock. 

"Ask Miss Donovan to come to me," she said. "I want to see her particularly." 

In less than five minutes Miss Donovan made her appearance. She was lovely, if wintry in aspect, and seemed to bring cold air in the scanty folds of her somber merino dress. She was no age in particular, and looked as if she had never been younger, and would never grow older, but would remain forever working backward and forward in her narrow groove, like some self-feeding machine for the instruction of young ladies. 

"Donovan, my dear," said Mrs. Vincent, without ceremony, "this gentleman is a relative of Miss Morstan's. Do you remember how long it is since she came to us at Crescent Villas?" 

"She came in August, 18--," answered Miss Donovan; "I think it was the eighteenth of August, but I'm not quite sure that it wasn't the seventeenth. I know it was on a Tuesday." 

"Thank you, Donovan; you are a most invaluable darling," exclaimed Mrs. Vincent, with her sweetest smile. It was, perhaps, because of the invaluable nature of Miss Donovan' services that she had received no remuneration whatever from her employer for the last three or four years. Mrs. Vincent might have hesitated to pay from very contempt for the pitiful nature of the stipend as compared with the merits of the teacher. 

"Is there anything else that Donovan or I can tell you, Mr. Holmes?" asked the schoolmistress. "Donovan has a far better memory than I have." 

"Can you tell me where Miss Morstan came from when she entered your household?" Sherlock inquired. 

"Not very precisely," answered Mrs. Vincent. "I have a vague notion that Miss Morstan said something about coming from the seaside, but she didn't say where, or if she did I have forgotten it. Donovan, did Miss Morstan tell you where she came from?" 

"Oh, no!" replied Miss Donovan, shaking her grim little head significantly. "Miss Morstan told me nothing; she was too clever for that. She knows how to keep her own secrets, in spite of her innocent ways and her curly hair," Miss Donovan added, spitefully. 

"You think she had secrets?" Sherlock asked, rather more calmly than he felt. 

"I know she had," replied Miss Donovan, with frosty decision; "all manner of secrets. I wouldn't have engaged such a person as junior teacher in a respectable school, without so much as one word of recommendation from any living creature." 

"You had no reference, then, from Miss Morstan?" asked Sherlock, addressing Mrs. Vincent. 

"No," the lady answered, with some little embarrassment; "I waived that. Miss Morstan waived the question of salary; I could not do less than waive the question of reference. She quarreled with her papa, she told me, and she wanted to find a home away from all the people she had ever known. She wished to keep herself quite separate from these people. She had endured so much, she said, young as she was, and she wanted to escape from her troubles. How could I press her for a reference under these circumstances, especially when I saw that she was a perfect lady? You know that Mary Morstan was a perfect lady, Donovan, and it is very unkind for you to say such cruel things about my taking her without a reference." 

"When people make favorites, they are apt to be deceived in them," Miss Donovan answered, with icy sententiousness, and with no very perceptible relevance to the point in discussion. 

"I never made her a favorite, you jealous Donovan," Mrs. Vincent answered, reproachfully. "I never said she was as useful as you, dear. You know I never did." 

"Oh, no!" replied Miss Donovan, with a chilling accent, "you never said she was useful. She was only ornamental; a person to be shown off to visitors, and to play fantasias on the drawing-room piano." 

"Then you can give me no clue to Miss Morstan's previous history?" Sherlock asked, looking from the schoolmistress to her teacher. He saw very clearly that Miss Donovan bore an envious grudge against Mary Morstan—a grudge which even the lapse of time had not healed. 

"If this woman knows anything to my lady's detriment, she will tell it," he thought. "She will tell it only too willingly." 

But Miss Donovan appeared to know nothing whatever; except that Miss Morstan had sometimes declared herself an ill-used creature, deceived by the baseness of mankind, and the victim of unmerited sufferings, in the way of poverty and deprivation. Beyond this, Miss Donovan could tell nothing; and although she made the most of what she did know, Sherlock soon sounded the depth of her small stock of information. 

"I have only one more question to ask," he said at last. "It is this: Did Miss Morstan leave any books or knick-knacks, or any other kind of property whatever, behind her, when she left your establishment?" 

"Not to my knowledge," Mrs. Vincent replied. 

"Yes," cried Miss Donovan, sharply. "She did leave something. She left a box. It's up-stairs in my room. I've got an old bonnet in it. Would you like to see the box?" she asked, addressing Sherlock. 

"If you will be so good as to allow me," he answered, "I should very much like to see it." 

"I'll fetch it down," said Miss Donovan. "It's not very big." 

She ran out of the room before Mr. Holmes had time to utter any polite remonstrance. 

"How pitiless these women are to each other," he thought, while the teacher was absent. 

Miss Donovan re-entered while the young barrister was meditating upon the infamy of her sex. She carried a dilapidated paper-covered bonnet-box, which she submitted to Sherlock's inspection. 

Mr. Holmes knelt down to examine the scraps of railway labels and addresses which were pasted here and there upon the box. It had been battered upon a great many different lines of railway, and had evidently traveled considerably. Many of the labels had been torn off, but fragments of some of them remained. 

The only label which had not been either defaced or torn away was the last, which bore the name of Miss Morstan, passenger to London. Looking very closely at this label, Mr. Holmes discovered that it had been pasted over another. 

"Will you be so good as to let me have a little water and a piece of sponge?" he said. "I want to get off this upper label. Believe me that I am justified in what I am doing." 

Miss Donovan ran out of the room and returned immediately with a basin of water and a sponge. 

"Shall I take off the label?" she asked. 

"No, thank you," Sherlock answered, coldly. "I can do it very well myself." 

He damped the upper label several times before he could loosen the edges of the paper; but after two or three careful attempts the moistened surface peeled off, without injury to the underneath address. 

Miss Donovan could not contrive to read this address across Sherlock's shoulder, though she exhibited considerable dexterity in her endeavors to accomplish that object. 

Mr. Holmes repeated his operations upon the lower label, which he removed from the box, and placed very carefully between two blank leaves of his pocket-book. 

"I need intrude upon you no longer, ladies," he said, when he had done this. "I am extremely obliged to you for having afforded me all the information in your power. I wish you good-morning." 

Mrs. Vincent smiled and bowed, murmuring some complacent conventionality about the delight she had felt in Mr. Holmes's visit. Miss Donovan, more observant, stared at the abrupt change which had come over the young man's face since he had removed the upper label from the box. 

Sherlock walked slowly away from Acacia Cottage. "If that which I have found to-day is no evidence for a jury," he thought, "it is surely enough to convince Sir Michael that he has married a designing and infamous woman." 

* * * * *

Sherlock Holmes walked slowly through the leafless grove, under the bare and shadowless trees in the gray February atmosphere, thinking as he went of the discovery he had just made. 

"I have that in my pocket-book," he pondered, "which forms the connecting link between the woman whose death John Watson read of in the Times newspaper and the woman who rules in Sir Michael's house. The history of Mary Morstan ends abruptly on the threshold of Mrs. Vincent's school. She entered that establishment in August, 18--. The schoolmistress and her assistant can tell me this but they cannot tell me whence she came. They cannot give me one clue to the secrets of her life from the day of her birth until the day she entered that house. I can go no further in this backward investigation of my lady's antecedents. What am I to do, then, if I mean to keep my promise to Harriet Watson?" 

He walked on for a few paces revolving this question in his mind, with a darker shadow than the shadows of the gathering winter twilight on his face, and a heavy oppression of mingled sorrow and dread weighing down his heart. 

"My duty is clear enough," he thought—"not the less clear because it leads me step by step, carrying ruin and desolation with me, to Stamford Court. I must begin at the other end—I must begin at the other end, and discover the history of Maria Watson from the hour of John's departure until the day of her burial in the churchyard." 

Mr. Holmes hailed a passing hansom, and drove back to his chambers. 

He reached Figtree Court in time to write a few lines to Harriet Watson, and to post his letter at St. Martin's-le-Grand off before six o'clock. 

"It will save me a day," he thought, as he drove to the General Post Office with this brief epistle. 

He had written to Harriet Watson to inquire the name of the little seaport town in which John had met his future wife Maria; for in spite of the intimacy between the two young men, Sherlock Holmes knew very few particulars of his friend's brief married life. 

From the hour in which John Watson had read the announcement of his wife's death in the columns of the Times, he had avoided all mention of the tender history which had been so cruelly broken, the familiar record which had been so darkly blotted out. 

There was so much that was painful in that brief story. There was such bitter self-reproach involved in the recollection of that desertion which must have seemed so cruel to her who waited and watched at home! Sherlock Holmes comprehended this, and he did not wonder at his friend's silence. The sorrowful story had been tacitly avoided by both, and Sherlock was as ignorant of the unhappy history of this one year in his schoolfellow's life as if they had never lived together in friendly companionship in those snug Temple chambers. Why, he did not even know where the couple had first met!

Sherlock Holmes had requested Harriet Watson to telegraph an answer to his question, in order to avoid the loss of a day in the accomplishment of the investigation he had promised to perform. 

The telegraphic answer reached Figtree Court before twelve o'clock the next day. 

The name of the seaport town was Wildernsea. 

Within an hour of the receipt of this message, Mr. Holmes arrived at the King's-cross station, and took his ticket for Wildernsea by an express train that started at a quarter before two. 

The shrieking engine bore him on the dreary northward journey, whirling him over desert wastes of flat meadow-land and bare cornfields, faintly tinted with fresh sprouting green. This northern road was strange and unfamiliar to the young barrister, and the wide expanse of the wintry landscape chilled him by its aspect of bare loneliness. The knowledge of the purpose of his journey blighted every object upon which his absent glances fixed themselves for a moment, only to wander wearily away; only to turn inward upon that far darker picture always presenting itself to his anxious mind. 

It was dark when Sherlock felt the briny freshness of the sea upon the breeze that blew in at the open window of the carriage, and an hour afterward the train stopped at a melancholy station, built amid a sandy desert, and inhabited by two or three gloomy officials, one of whom rung a terrific peal upon a harshly clanging bell as the train approached. 

Mr. Holmes was the only passenger who alighted at the dismal station. The train swept on to the gayer scenes before the barrister had time to collect his senses, or to pick up the portmanteau which had been discovered with some difficulty amid a black cavern of baggage only illuminated by one lantern. 

"I wonder whether settlers in the backwoods of America feel as solitary and strange as I feel to-night?" he thought, as he stared hopelessly about him in the darkness. 

He called to one of the officials, and pointed to his portmanteau. 

"Will you carry that to the nearest hotel for me?" he asked—"that is to say, if I can get a good bed there." 

The man laughed as he shouldered the portmanteau. 

"You can get thirty beds, I dare say, sir, if you wanted 'em," he said. "We ain't over busy at Wildernsea at this time o' year. This way, sir." 

The porter opened a wooden door in the station wall, and Sherlock Holmes found himself upon a wide bowling-green of smooth grass, which surrounded a huge, square building, that loomed darkly on him through the winter's night, its black solidity only relieved by two lighted windows, far apart from each other, and glimmering redly like beacons on the darkness. 

"This is the Victoria Hotel, sir," said the porter. "You wouldn't believe the crowds of company we have down here in the summer." 

In the face of the bare grass-plat, the tenantless wooden alcoves, and the dark windows of the hotel, it was indeed rather difficult to imagine that the place was ever gay with merry people taking pleasure in the bright summer weather; but Sherlock Holmes declared himself willing to believe anything the porter pleased to tell him, and followed his guide meekly to a little door at the side of the big hotel, which led into a comfortable bar, where the humbler classes of summer visitors were accommodated with such refreshments as they pleased to pay for, without running the gantlet of the prim, white-waistcoated waiters on guard at the principal entrance. 

But there were very few attendants retained at the hotel in the bleak February season, and it was the landlord himself who ushered Sherlock into a dreary wilderness of polished mahogany tables and horsehair cushioned chairs, which he called the coffee-room. 

Mr. Holmes seated himself close to the wide steel fender, and stretched his cramped legs upon the hearth-rug, while the landlord drove the poker into the vast pile of coal, and sent a ruddy blaze roaring upward through the chimney. 

"If you would prefer a private sitting room, sir—" the man began. 

"No, thank you," said Sherlock, indifferently; "this room seems quite private enough just now. If you will order me a mutton chop and a pint of sherry, I shall be obliged." 

"Certainly, sir." 

"And I shall be still more obliged if you will favor me with a few minutes' conversation before you do so." 

"With very great pleasure, sir," the landlord answered, good-naturedly. "We see so very little company at this season of the year, that we are only too glad to oblige those gentlemen who do visit us. Any information which I can afford you respecting the neighborhood of Wildernsea and its attractions," added the landlord, unconsciously quoting a small hand-book of the watering-place which he sold in the bar, "I shall be most happy to—" 

"But I don't want to know anything about the neighborhood of Wildernsea," interrupted Sherlock, with a feeble protest against the landlord's volubility. "I want to ask you a few questions about some people who once lived here." 

The landlord bowed and smiled, with an air which implied his readiness to recite the biographies of all the inhabitants of the little seaport, if required by Mr. Holmes to do so. 

"How many years have you lived here?" Sherlock asked, taking his memorandum book from his pocket. "Will it annoy you if I make notes of your replies to my questions?" 

"Not at all, sir," replied the landlord, with a pompous enjoyment of the air of solemnity and importance which pervaded this business. "Any information which I can afford that is likely to be of ultimate value—" 

"Yes, thank you," Sherlock murmured, interrupting the flow of words. "You have lived here—" 

"Six years, sir, since 18--. I was in business at Hull prior to that time. This house was only completed in the October before I entered it." 

"Do you remember a local woman, named Maria, who met and married a man named Watson, that year or the next?" 

"John Watson, sir?" 

"Yes, John. I see you do remember him." 

"Yes, sir. He used to spend his evenings in this very room, though the walls were damp at that time, and we weren't able to paper the place for nearly a twelvemonth afterward. He did odd jobs for us during the day, and in return he had this room, unfinished though it was, for his own use in the evenings. He met Maria here, at Christmas time. They were married here, sir, and then moved on to London. But word is, the gentleman ran away to India, and left the lady, a week or two after her baby was born. The business made quite a sensation here in Wildernsea, sir, and Mrs.Watson was very much pitied by the Wildernsea folks, sir, for she was very pretty, and had such nice winning ways that she was a favorite with everybody who knew her." 

“And you know nothing of her since, I suppose?”

“Indeed not, sir, nor him neither. Transience is rather the nature of a seaside town, I fear.” 

Sherlock Holmes thanked his host, and bid him a very good evening. He picked at his solitary dinner, drank a couple of glasses of sherry, smoked a cigar, and then retired to the apartment in which a fire had been lighted for his comfort. 

He soon fell asleep, worn out with the fatigue of hurrying from place to place during the last two days; but his slumber was not a heavy one, for he had not brought his case of pharmacopeia along with him, and he heard the disconsolate moaning of the wind upon the sandy wastes, and the long waves rolling in monotonously upon the flat shore. 

In his troublesome dreams he saw Stamford Court, rooted up from amidst the green pastures and the shady hedgerows of Essex, standing bare and unprotected upon that desolate northern shore, threatened by the rapid rising of a boisterous sea, whose waves seemed gathering upward to descend and crush the house he loved. As the hurrying waves rolled nearer and nearer to the stately mansion, the sleeper saw a pale, starry face looking out of the silvery foam, and knew that it was my lady, transformed into a mermaid, beckoning Sir Michael to destruction. Beyond that rising sea great masses of cloud, blacker than the blackest ink, more dense than the darkest night, lowered upon the dreamer's eye; but as he looked at the dismal horizon the storm-clouds slowly parted, and from a narrow rent in the darkness a ray of light streamed out upon the hideous waves, which slowly, very slowly, receded, leaving the old mansion safe and firmly rooted on the shore. 

Sherlock awoke with the memory of this dream in his mind, and a sensation of physical relief, as if some heavy weight, which had oppressed him all the night, had been lifted from his breast. 

At a quarter-before ten in the morning, he paid his bill and sent his portmanteau ahead of him to the station, for he had determined to walk. 

He strolled out past a row of hard, uncompromising, square-built habitations that stretched away to the little harbor, in which two or three merchant vessels and a couple of colliers were anchored. Beyond the harbor there loomed, gray and cold upon the wintry horizon, a dismal barrack, parted from the Wildernsea houses by a narrow creek, spanned by an iron drawbridge. 

On one side of the harbor a long stone pier stretched out far away into the cruel loneliness of the sea, as if built for the especial accommodation of some modern Timon, too misanthropical to be satisfied even with the solitude of Wildernsea, and anxious to get still further away from his fellow-creatures. 

It was on that pier John Watson had first met his wife, under the blazing glory of a midsummer sky, and to the music of a braying band. It was there that the young man had first yielded to that sweet delusion, that fatal infatuation which had exercised so dark an influence upon his after-life. 

Sherlock looked savagely at this solitary watering-place—the shabby seaport. "It is such a place as this," he thought, "that works a strong man's ruin.” 

Ruminating in this wise, Sherlock Holmes reached the avenue approaching the station. He was startled to hear his name called aloud in the street, and even more surprised to see his host from the night before approaching him at a breakneck pace. 

“Mr. Holmes! Mr. Holmes! Pray stop, and wait a moment. I must –” and here the landlord paused, panting – “I must have a word with you, once I’ve found my breath.” 

Holmes stood patiently while the stout man recovered himself. “Well?” he asked at last, overcome with curiosity. “What can be of such importance?”

Still wheezing, the other man replied, “I have news that may interest you, sir, regarding your inquiries of last night.”

Holmes felt extreme surprise at this unexpected turn of events, and urged the man to divest himself of this important information.

“I must confess, sir, that our conversation last night interested me extremely, for although it was many years ago, I recalled that my own wife had been acquainted with Maria Watson, before her marriage. When I arrived home in the evening, I mentioned your inquiries to my wife, and sir –” here he paused, for maximal dramatic effect, much to Holmes’ impatience, “She was most excited!”

Holmes felt his pulse accelerate in anticipation. “What did she say?” he asked eagerly.

“She admitted to me then that she had indeed heard from Maria, and that I was to tell you all about it, and beg for any news you might have of her now. They were closer friends that I had known, and my wife is eager for news of her. She received one letter from Maria, and one only. And sir, I swear that I knew nothing of it when we spoke last night. It was only later that I realized the full extent of their intimacy. It worries her, sir, as you can well imagine, that her friend should have disappeared so completely. She sends the letter to you, and begs that you send word of her if you hear anything.”

Holmes was silent, but took the offered paper from the landlord’s hand. It was undated, and very brief. It began abruptly thus: 

"I am weary of my life here, and wish, if I can, to find a new one. I go out into the world, dissevered from every link which binds me to the hateful past, to seek another home and another fortune. Forgive me if I have been fretful, capricious, changeable. You should forgive me, for you know why I have been so. You know the secret which is the key to my life. 

"MARIA WATSON." 

These lines were written in a hand that Sherlock Holmes knew only too well. 

He stood for a long, silent moment pondering over the letter. He wearied his brain in endeavoring to find a clue to the signification of these two sentences. He could remember nothing, nor could he imagine anything that would throw a light upon their meaning. This made a very small link in the chain of circumstantial evidence, perhaps; but it was a link, nevertheless, and it fitted neatly into its place. 

"Did your wife understand the meaning of these lines?” he asked the landlord at last. 

“I put that very question to her this morning, sir, indeed I did! And she swore up and down that she was as puzzled as I.” 

Holmes sighed in frustration. “And she heard nothing from her friend after this?" he asked. 

“Nothing, sir,” the good man replied, “and it troubles her greatly” 

“And nothing at all of the child?”

“Not a word.”

Holmes muttered his thanks to the man for his persistence in chasing him down with this new information. They parted with a handshake, and a promise from Holmes that he would return the letter when he was finished with it. 

He boarded the express for London at a quarter past one. 

"I have traced the histories of Mary Morstan and Maria Watson to their vanishing points," he thought; "my next business is to discover the history of the woman who lies buried in that churchyard."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Sunday Summer Serial: thanks to redscudery for the brilliant idea!
> 
> Thursday Teasers posted on my Tumblr (http://doctornerdington.tumblr.com).
> 
> Comments appreciated. 
> 
> Next week: "Hidden in the Grave." OOOOOOO.


	10. Hidden in the Grave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a posthumous collaboration with Mary Elizabeth Braddon; I've adapted her novel Lady Audley's Secret, and retained much of her original structure and language. ALL CREDIT TO HER.
> 
> Current chapter rating: all audiences (next week: mature. OOOOOOO.).
> 
> Braddon's novel was originally published serially, as this adaptation is. Chapter updates every Sunday throughout the summer!

Upon his return from Wildernsea, Sherlock Holmes found a letter from Molly awaiting him at his chambers. 

"Papa is much better," the young lady wrote, "and is very anxious to have you at the Court. For some inexplicable reason, my lady has taken it into her head that your presence is extremely desirable, and worries me with her frivolous questions about your movements. So pray come without delay, and set these people at rest. Your affectionate, M.S." 

"So my lady is anxious to know my movements," thought Sherlock Holmes, as he sat brooding and smoking by his lonely fireside. "She is anxious; and she questions her step-daughter in that pretty, childlike manner which has such a bewitching air of innocent frivolity. Poor little creature; poor unhappy little golden-haired sinner. The battle between us seems terribly unfair. Why doesn't she run away while there is still time? I have given her fair warning, I have shown her my cards, and worked openly enough in this business, Heaven knows. Why doesn't she run away?" 

He repeated this question again and again as he filled and emptied his meerschaum, surrounding himself with the blue vapor from his pipe until he looked like some modern magician seated in his laboratory. 

"Why doesn't she run away? I would bring no needless shame upon that house, of all other houses upon this wide earth. I would only do my duty to my missing friend, and to that brave and generous man who has pledged his faith to a worthless woman." 

His thoughts wandered away to that gloomy prospect in which he saw no gleam of brightness to relieve the dull, black obscurity that encompassed the future, shutting in his pathway on every side, and spreading a dense curtain around and about him, which Hope was powerless to penetrate. He was forever haunted by the vision of Sir Michael’s anguish, forever tortured by the thought of that ruin and desolation which, being brought about by his instrumentality, would seem in a manner his handiwork. But amid all, and through all, Harriet Watson, with an imperious gesture, beckoned him onward to her brother's unknown grave. 

"Shall I go down to Southampton," he thought, "and endeavor to discover the history of the woman who lies buried there? Can I bear any more of this slow, plodding investigation? Working backwards, bribing the unknowing witnesses to this foul conspiracy, until I find my way to the thrice guilty principal? No! I will go straight to that arch-conspirator, and will tear away the beautiful veil under which she hides her wickedness, and will wring from her the secret of my friend's fate, and banish her forever from the house which her presence has polluted." 

He started early the next morning for Essex, and reached Stamford before eleven o'clock. 

Early as it was, my lady was out. She had driven to Chelmsford upon a shopping expedition with her step-daughter. She had several calls to make in the neighborhood of the town, and was not likely to return until dinner-time. Sir Michael's health was very much improved, and he would come down stairs in the afternoon. Would Mr. Holmes go to his room? 

No; Sherlock had no wish to meet that generous man. What could he say to him? How could he smooth the way to the trouble that was to come?—how soften the cruel blow of the great grief that he was preparing for that noble and trusting heart? 

"If I could forgive her the wrong done to my friend," Sherlock thought, "I should still abhor her for the misery her guilt must bring upon the man who has believed in her." 

He told the servant that he would stroll into the village, and return before dinner. He walked slowly away from the Court, wandering across the meadows that led to the village, purposeless and indifferent, with the great trouble and perplexity of his life stamped upon his face and reflected in his manner. 

"I will go into the churchyard," he thought, "and stare at the tombstones. There is nothing I can do that will make me more gloomy than I am." 

He was in those very meadows through which he had hurried from Stamford Court to the station upon the September day in which John Watson had disappeared. He looked at the pathway by which he had gone upon that day, and remembered his unaccustomed hurry, and the vague feeling of terror which had taken possession of him immediately upon losing sight of his friend. 

"Why did that unaccountable terror seize upon me?" he thought. "Why was it that I saw some strange mystery in my friend's disappearance? Was it a premonition, or a monomania? What if I am wrong after all? What if this chain of evidence which I have constructed link by link, is woven out of my own folly? What if this edifice of horror and suspicion is a mere collection of crotchets—the nervous fancies of a lonely bachelor? Mr. William Watson sees no meaning in the events out of which I have made myself a horrible mystery. I lay the separate links of the chain before him, and he cannot recognize their fitness. He is unable to put them together. Oh, my God, if it should be in myself all this time that the misery lies; if—" he smiled bitterly, and shook his head. "I have the handwriting in my pocket-book which is the evidence of the conspiracy," he thought. "It remains for me to discover the darker half of my lady's secret." 

He avoided the village, still keeping to the meadows. The church lay a little way back from the straggling High street, and a rough wooden gate opened from the churchyard into a broad meadow, that was bordered by a running stream, and sloped down into a grassy valley dotted by groups of cattle. 

Sherlock slowly ascended the narrow hillside pathway leading up to the gate in the churchyard. The quiet dullness of the lonely landscape harmonized with his own gloom. The solitary figure of an old man hobbling toward a stile at the further end of the wide meadow was the only human creature visible upon the area over which the young barrister looked. The smoke slowly ascending from the scattered houses in the long High street was the only evidence of human life. The slow progress of the hands of the old clock in the church steeple was the only token by which a traveler could perceive that a sluggish course of rustic life had not come to a full stop in the village of Stamford. 

Yet, there was one other sign. As Sherlock opened the gate of the churchyard, and strolled listlessly into the little enclosure, he became aware of the solemn music of an organ, audible through a half-open window in the steeple. 

He stopped and listened to the slow harmonies of a dreamy melody that sounded like an extempore composition of an accomplished player. 

"Who would have believed that Stamford church could boast such an organ?" thought Sherlock. "When last I was here, the schoolmaster used to accompany his children by a primitive performance of common chords. I didn't think the old organ had such music in it." 

He lingered at the gate, not caring to break the lazy spell woven about him by the monotonous melancholy of the organist's performance. The tones of the instrument, now swelling to their fullest power, now sinking to a low, whispering softness, floated toward him upon the misty winter atmosphere, and had a soothing influence, that seemed to comfort him in his trouble. 

He closed the gate softly, and crossed the little patch of gravel before the door of the church. The door had been left ajar—by the organist, perhaps. Sherlock Holmes pushed it open, and walked into the square porch, from which a flight of narrow stone steps wound upward to the organ-loft and the belfry. Mr. Holmes took off his hat, and opened the door between the porch and the body of the church. He stepped softly into the holy edifice, which had a damp, moldy smell upon week-days. He walked down the narrow aisle to the altar-rails, and from that point of observation took a survey of the church. The little gallery was exactly opposite to him, but the scanty green curtains before the organ were closely drawn, and he could not get a glimpse of the player. 

The music still rolled on. The organist had wandered into a melody of Mendelssohn's, a strain whose dreamy sadness went straight to Sherlock's heart. He loitered in the nooks and corners of the church, examining the dilapidated memorials of the well-nigh forgotten dead, and listening to the music. 

"If John had died in my arms, and I had buried him in this quiet church, in one corner of the vaults over which I tread to-day, how much anguish of mind, vacillation and torment I might have escaped," thought Sherlock Holmes, as he read the faded inscriptions upon tablets of discolored marble; "I should have known his fate—I should have known his fate! Ah, how much there would have been in that. It is this miserable uncertainty, this horrible suspicion which has poisoned my very life." 

He looked at his watch. 

"Half-past one," he muttered. "I shall have to wait four or five dreary hours before my lady comes home from her morning calls—her pretty visits of ceremony or friendliness. Good Heaven! What an actress this woman is. What an arch trickster—what an all-accomplished deceiver. But she shall play her pretty comedy no longer under Sir Michael’s roof. I have diplomatized long enough. She has refused to accept an indirect warning. To-night I will speak plainly." 

The music of the organ ceased, and Sherlock heard the closing of the instrument. 

"I'll have a look at this new organist," he thought, "who can afford to bury his talents at Stamford, and play Mendelssohn's finest fugues for a stipend of sixteen pounds a year." He lingered in the porch, waiting for the organist to descend the awkward little stair-case. In the weary trouble of his mind, and with the prospect of getting through the five hours in the best way he could, Mr. Holmes was glad to cultivate any diversion of thought, however idle. He therefore freely indulged his curiosity about the new organist. 

The first person who appeared upon the steep stone steps was a boy in corduroy trousers and a dark linen smock-frock, who shambled down the stairs with a good deal of unnecessary clatter of his hobnailed shoes, and who was red in the face from the exertion of blowing the bellows of the old organ. Close behind this boy came a young lady, very plainly dressed in a black silk gown and a large gray shawl, who started and turned pale at sight of Mr. Holmes. 

This young lady was Harriet Watson. 

Of all people in the world she was the last whom Sherlock either expected or wished to see. She had told him that she was going to pay a visit to some friends who lived in Essex; but the county is a wide one, and the village of Stamford one of the most obscure and least frequented spots in the whole of its extent. That the sister of his lost friend should be here—here where she could watch his every action, and from those actions deduce the secret workings of his mind, tracing his doubts home to their object, made a complication of his difficulties that he could never have anticipated. It brought him back to that consciousness of his own helplessness, in which he had exclaimed: "A hand that is stronger than my own is beckoning me onward on the dark road that leads to my lost friend's unknown grave." 

Harriet Watson was the first to speak. 

"You are surprised to see me here, Mr. Holmes," she said. 

"Very much surprised." 

"I told you that I was coming to Essex. I left home day before yesterday. I was leaving home when I received your telegraphic message. The friend with whom I am staying is Mrs. Martyn, the wife of the new rector of The Castle Inn.. I came down this morning to see the village and church, and as Mrs. Martyn had to pay a visit to the school with the curate and his wife, I stopped here and amused myself by trying the old organ. I was not aware till I came here that there was a village called Stamford. The place takes its name from the family, I suppose?" 

"I believe so," Sherlock answered, wondering at the lady's calmness, in contradistinction to his own embarrassment. "I have a vague recollection of hearing the story of some ancestor who was called Stamford of Stamford in the reign of Edward the Fourth. The tomb inside the rails near the altar belongs to one of the knights of Stamford, but I have never taken the trouble to remember his achievements. Are you going to wait here for your friends, Miss Watson?" 

"Yes; they are to return here for me after they have finished their rounds." 

"And you go back to The Castle Inn with them this afternoon?" 

"Yes." 

Sherlock stood with his hat in his hand, looking absently out at the tombstones and the low wall of the church yard. Harriet Watson watched his pale face, haggard under the deepening shadow that had rested upon it so long. 

"You have been ill since I saw you last, Mr. Holmes," she said, in a low voice, that had the same melodious sadness as the notes of the old organ under her touch. 

"No, I have not been ill; I have been only harassed, wearied by a hundred doubts and perplexities." 

He was thinking as he spoke to her: "How much does she guess? How much does she suspect?" 

He had told the story of John's disappearance and of his own suspicions, suppressing only the names of those concerned in the mystery; but what if this girl should fathom this slender disguise, and discover for herself that which he had chosen to withhold. 

Her grave eyes were fixed upon his face, and he knew that she was trying to read the innermost secrets of his mind. 

"What am I in her hands?" he thought. "What am I in the hands of this woman, who has John’s face and the manner of Pallas Athene. She reads my pitiful, vacillating soul, and plucks the thoughts out of my heart with the magic of her solemn brown eyes. " 

Mr. Holmes was clearing his throat preparatory to bidding his beautiful companion good-morning, and making his escape from the thraldom of her presence into the lonely meadow outside the churchyard, when Harriet Watson arrested him by speaking upon that very subject which he was most anxious to avoid. 

"You promised to write to me, Mr. Holmes," she said, "if you made any discovery which carried you nearer to the mystery of my brother's disappearance. You have not written to me, and I imagine, therefore, that you have discovered nothing." 

Sherlock Holmes was silent for some moments. How could he answer this direct question? 

"The chain of circumstantial evidence which unites the mystery of your brother's fate with the person whom I suspect," he said, after a pause, "is formed of very slight links. I think that I have added another link to that chain since I saw you in Dorsetshire." 

"And you refuse to tell me what it is that you have discovered?" 

"Only until I have discovered all." 

"I thought from your message that you were going to Wildernsea." 

"I have been there." 

"Indeed! It was there that you made some discovery, then?" 

"It was," answered Sherlock. "You must remember, Miss Watson, that the sole ground upon which my suspicions rest is the identity of two individuals who have no apparent connection—the identity of a person who is supposed to be dead with one who is living. The conspiracy of which I believe your brother to have been the victim hinges upon this. If his wife, Maria Watson, died when the papers recorded her death—if the woman who lies buried in the churchyard was indeed the woman whose name is inscribed on the headstone of the grave—I have no case, and I have no clue to the mystery of your brother's fate. I am about to put this to the test. I believe that I am now in a position to play a bold game, and I believe that I shall soon arrive at the truth." 

He spoke in a low voice, and with a solemn emphasis that betrayed the intensity of his feeling. Miss Watson stretched out her ungloved hand, and laid it in his own. The cold touch of that slender hand sent a shiver through his frame. 

"You will not suffer my brother's fate to remain a mystery, Mr. Holmes," she said, quietly. "I know that you will do your duty to your friend." 

The rector's wife and her two companions entered the churchyard as Harriet Watson said this. Sherlock Holmes pressed the hand that rested in his own, and raised it to his lips. 

"I am a good-for-nothing fellow, Miss Watson," he said; "but if I could restore your brother John to life and happiness, I should care very little for any sacrifice of my own feeling. I fear that the most I can do is to fathom the secret of his fate and in doing that I must sacrifice those who are dear to me." 

He put on his hat, and hurried through the gateway leading into the field as Mrs. Martyn came up to the porch. 

"Who is that pale young man I caught tête-a-tête with you, Harriet?" she asked, laughing. 

"He is a Mr. Holmes, a friend of my poor brother's." 

"Indeed! He is a guest of Sir Michael Stamford, I suppose?" 

"Sir Michael Stamford!" 

"Yes, my dear; the most important personage in the parish of Stamford. But we'll call at the Court in a day or two, and you shall see the baronet and his pretty young wife." 

"His young wife!" replied Harriet Watson, looking earnestly at her friend. "Has Sir Michael Stamford lately married, then?" 

"Yes. He was a widower for sixteen years, and married a penniless young governess about a year and a half ago. The story is quite romantic, and Lady Stamford is considered the belle of the county. But come, my dear Harriet, the pony is tired of waiting for us, and we've a long drive before dinner." 

Harriet Watson took her seat in the little basket-carriage which was waiting at the principal gate of the churchyard, in the care of the boy who had blown the organ-bellows. Mrs. Martyn shook the reins, and the sturdy chestnut cob trotted off in the direction of The Castle Inn.. 

"Will you tell me more about this Lady Stamford, Fanny?" Miss Watson said, after a long pause. "I want to know all about her. Have you heard her maiden name?" 

"Yes; she was a Miss Morstan." 

"And she is very pretty?" 

"Yes, very, very pretty. Rather a childish beauty though, with large, clear blue eyes, and pale golden ringlets, that fall in a feathery shower over her throat and shoulders." 

Harriet Watson was silent. She did not ask any further questions about my lady. 

She was thinking of a passage in that letter which John had written to her during his honeymoon—a passage in which he said: "My childish little wife is watching me as I write this—Ah! how I wish you could see her, Harriet! Her eyes are as blue and as clear as the skies on a bright summer's day, and her hair falls about her face like the pale golden halo you see round the head of a Madonna in an Italian picture." 

* * * * *

Sherlock Holmes was loitering upon the broad grass-plat in front of the Court as the carriage containing my lady and Molly drove under the archway, and drew up at the low turret-door. Mr. Holmes presented himself in time to hand the ladies out of the vehicle. 

My lady looked very pretty in a delicate blue bonnet and the sables which Sherlock had bought for her at St. Petersburg. She seemed very well pleased to see Sherlock, and smiled most bewitchingly as she gave him her exquisitely gloved little hand. 

"So you have come back to us, truant?" she said, laughing. "And now that you have returned, we shall keep you prisoner. We won't let him run away again, will we, Molly?" 

Miss Stamford gave her head a scornful toss that shook the heavy curls under her cavalier hat. 

"I have nothing to do with the movements of so erratic an individual," she said. "Since Sherlock Holmes has taken it into his head to conduct himself like some ghost-haunted hero in a German story, I have given up attempting to understand him." 

Mr. Holmes looked at Molly with an expression of serio-comic perplexity. 

"And pray where have you been wandering during the last day or two, Mr. Holmes?" asked my lady, as she lingered with her step-daughter upon the threshold of the turret-door, waiting until Sherlock should be pleased to stand aside and allow them to pass. The young man started as she asked this question and looked up at her suddenly. Something in the aspect of her bright young beauty, something in the childish innocence of her expression, seemed to smite him to the heart, and his face grew ghastly pale as he looked at her. 

"I have been to the seaside," he said; "at the little watering place where my poor friend John Watson lived at the time of his marriage." 

The white change in my lady's face was the only sign of her having heard these words. She smiled, a faint, sickly smile, and tried to pass into the house. 

"I must dress for dinner," she said. "I am going to a dinner-party, Mr. Holmes; please let me go in." 

"I must ask you to spare me half an hour, Lady Stamford," Sherlock answered, in a low voice. "I came down to Essex on purpose to speak to you." 

"What about?" asked my lady. 

She had recovered herself from any shock which she might have sustained a few moments before, and it was in her usual manner that she asked this question. Her face expressed the mingled bewilderment and curiosity of a puzzled child, rather than the serious surprise of a woman. 

"What can you want to talk to me about, Mr. Holmes?" she repeated. 

"I will tell you when we are alone," Sherlock said, glancing at Molly, who stood a little way behind my lady, watching this confidential little dialogue. 

"He is in love with the pathetic woman," thought Molly scornfully, "and it is for her sake he has become such a disconsolate object. He's just the sort of person to fall into an impossible love." 

Miss Stamford walked away to the grass-plat, turning her back upon Sherlock and my lady. 

"The absurd creature turned as white as a sheet when he saw her," she thought. "That slow lump of torpidity he calls his heart can beat, I suppose, once in a quarter of a century; but it seems that nothing but a blue-eyed wax-doll can set it going. I should have given him up long ago if I'd known that his idea of beauty was to be found in a toy-shop." 

Molly crossed the grass-plat and disappeared upon the opposite side of the quadrangle, where there was a Gothic gate that communicated with the stables. She went to seek consolation from her dog Caesar and her chestnut mare Atalanta, for she found it best and easiest to think deeply in the company of animals. 

"Will you come into the lime-walk, Lady Stamford?" said Sherlock, as Molly left the garden. "I wish to talk to you without fear of interruption or observation. I think we could choose no safer place than that. Will you come there with me?" 

"If you please," answered my lady. Mr. Holmes could see that she was trembling, and that she glanced from side to side as if looking for some outlet by which she might escape him. 

"You are shivering, Lady Stamford," he said. 

"Yes, I am very cold. I would rather speak to you some other day, please. Let it be to-morrow, if you will. I have to dress for dinner, and I want to see Sir Michael; I have not seen him since ten o'clock this morning. Please let it be to-morrow." 

There was a painful piteousness in her tone. 

"I must speak to you, Lady Stamford," he said. "If I am cruel, it is you who have made me cruel. You might have escaped this ordeal. You might have avoided me. I gave you fair warning. But you have chosen to defy me, and it is your own folly which is to blame if I can no longer spare you. Come with me. I tell you again I must speak to you." 

There was a cold determination in his tone which silenced my lady's objections. She followed him submissively to the little iron gate which communicated with the long garden behind the house—the garden in which a little rustic wooden bridge led across the quiet fish-pond into the lime-walk. 

The early winter twilight was closing in, and the intricate tracery of the leafless branches that overarched the lonely pathway looked black against the cold gray of the evening sky. The lime-walk seemed like some cloister in this uncertain light. 

"Why do you bring me to this horrible place to frighten me out of my poor wits?" cried my lady, peevishly. "You ought to know how nervous I am." 

"You are nervous, my lady?" 

"Yes, dreadfully nervous. I am worth a fortune to poor Mr. Dawson. He is always sending me camphor, and sal volatile, and red lavender, and all kinds of abominable mixtures, but he can't cure me." 

"Do you remember what Macbeth tells his physician, my lady?" asked Sherlock, gravely. "Mr. Dawson may be very much more clever than the Scottish leech, but I doubt if even he can minister to the mind that is diseased." 

"Who said that my mind was diseased?" exclaimed Lady Stamford. 

"I say so, my lady," answered Sherlock. "You tell me that you are nervous, and that all the medicines your doctor can prescribe are only so much physic that might as well be thrown to the dogs. Let me be the physician to strike to the root of your malady, Lady Stamford. Heaven knows that I wish to be merciful—that I would spare you as far as it is in my power to spare you in doing justice to others—but justice must be done. Shall I tell you why you are nervous in this house, my lady?" 

"If you can," she answered, with a little laugh. 

"Because for you this house is haunted." 

"Haunted?" 

"Yes, haunted by the ghost of John Watson." 

Sherlock Holmes heard my lady's quickened breathing, he fancied he could almost hear the loud beating of her heart as she walked by his side, shivering now and then, and with her sable cloak wrapped tightly around her. 

"What do you mean?" she cried suddenly, after a pause of some moments. "Why do you torment me about this John Watson, who happens to have taken it into his head to keep out of your way for a few months? Are you going mad, Mr. Holmes, and do you select me as the victim of your monomania? What is John Watson to me that you should worry me about him?" 

"He was a stranger to you, my lady, was he not?" 

"Of course!" answered Lady Stamford. "What should he be but a stranger?" 

"Shall I tell you the story of my friend's disappearance as I read that story, my lady?" asked Sherlock. 

"No," cried Lady Stamford; "I wish to know nothing of your friend. If he is dead, I am sorry for him. If he lives, I have no wish either to see him or to hear of him. Let me go in to see my husband, if you please, Mr. Holmes, unless you wish to detain me in this gloomy place until I catch my death of cold." 

"I wish to detain you until you have heard what I have to say, Lady Stamford," answered Sherlock, resolutely. "I will detain you no longer than is necessary, and when you have heard me you shall take your own course of action." 

"Very well, then; pray lose no time in saying what you have to say," replied my lady, carelessly. "I promise you to attend very patiently." 

"When my friend, John Watson, returned to England," Sherlock began, gravely, "the thought which was uppermost in his mind was the thought of his wife." 

"Whom he had deserted," said my lady, icily. "At least," she added quickly, "I remember your telling us something to that effect when you first told us your friend's story." 

"The thought that was uppermost in his mind was the thought of his wife," Sherlock repeated. "His fairest hope in the future was the hope of making her happy, and lavishing upon her the fortune which he had won by the force of his own strong arm in India. I saw him within a few hours of his reaching England, and I was a witness to the joyful pride with which he looked forward to his re-union with his wife. I was also a witness to the blow which struck him to the very heart—which changed him from the man he had been to a creature as unlike that former self as one human being can be unlike another. The blow which made that cruel change was the announcement of his wife's death in the Times newspaper. I now believe that that announcement was a black and bitter lie." 

"Indeed!" said my lady; "and what reason could any one have for announcing the death of Mrs. Watson, if Mrs. Watson had been alive?" 

"The lady herself might have had a reason," Sherlock answered, quietly. 

"What reason?" 

"How if she had taken advantage of John's absence to win a richer husband? How if she had married again, and wished to throw my poor friend off the scent by this false announcement?" 

Lady Stamford shrugged her shoulders. 

"Your suppositions are rather ridiculous, Mr. Holmes," she said; "it is to be hoped that you have some reasonable grounds for them." 

"I have examined a file of each of the major newspapers published in Essex," continued Sherlock, without replying to my lady's last observation, "and I find in one of the Colchester papers, dated July the 2nd, 18--, a brief paragraph among numerous miscellaneous scraps of information copied from other newspapers, to the effect that a Mr. John Watson, an English gentleman, had arrived Kolkata from the gold-fields, carrying with him nuggets and gold-dust to the amount of twenty thousand pounds, and that he had realized his property and sailed for England in the fast-sailing clipper Argus. This is a very small fact, of course, Lady Stamford, but it is enough to prove that any person residing in Essex in the July of that year, was likely to become aware of John Watson' return from India. Do you follow me?" 

"Not very clearly," said my lady. "What have the Essex papers to do with the death of Mrs. Watson?" 

"We will come to that by-and-by, Lady Stamford. I say that I believe the announcement in the Times to have been a false announcement, and a part of the criminal plot which was carried out by Maria Watson against my poor friend." 

"A criminal plot!" 

"Yes, a plot concocted by an artful woman, who had speculated upon the chances of her husband's death, and had secured a splendid position at the risk of committing a crime; a bold woman, my lady, who thought to play her comedy out to the end without fear of detection; a wicked woman, who did not care what misery she might inflict upon the honest heart of the man she betrayed; but a foolish woman, who looked at life as a game of chance, in which the best player was likely to hold the winning cards, forgetting that there is a Providence above the pitiful speculators, and that wicked secrets are never permitted to remain long hidden. If this woman of whom I speak had never been guilty of any blacker sin than the publication of that lying announcement in the Times newspaper, I should still hold her as the most detestable and calculating of human creatures. That cruel lie was a base and cowardly blow in the dark; it was the treacherous dagger-thrust of an infamous assassin." 

"But how do you know that the announcement was a false one?" asked my lady. "You told us that you had been with Mr. Watson to see his wife's grave -- and that of his daughter. Who was it who died, if it was not Mrs. Watson?" 

"Ah, Lady Stamford," said Sherlock, "that is a question which only two or three people can answer, and one or other of those persons shall answer it to me before long. I tell you, my lady, that I am determined to unravel the mystery of John Watson's death. Do you think I am to be put off by prevarication? No! Link by link I have put together the chain of evidence, which wants but a link here and there to be complete in its terrible strength. Do you think I will suffer myself to be baffled? Do you think I shall fail to discover those missing links? No, Lady Stamford, I shall not fail, for I know where to look for them! I have an idea of how to discover the history of the woman who lies buried in the churchyard, and I will spare no trouble in making that discovery, unless—" 

"Unless what?" asked my lady, eagerly. 

"Unless the woman I wish to save from degradation and punishment accepts the mercy I offer her, and takes warning while there is still time." 

My lady shrugged her graceful shoulders, and flashed bright defiance out of her blue eyes. 

"She would be a very foolish woman if she suffered herself to be influenced by any such absurdity," she said. "You are hypochondriacal, Mr. Holmes, and you must take camphor, or red lavender, or sal volatile. What can be more ridiculous than this idea which you have taken into your head? You lose your friend John Watson in rather a mysterious manner—that is to say, that gentleman chooses to leave England without giving you due notice. What of that? You confess that he became an altered man after his wife's death. He grew eccentric and misanthropical; he affected an utter indifference as to what became of him. What more likely, then, than that he grew tired of the monotony of civilized life, and ran away to those savage gold-fields to find a distraction for his grief? It is rather a romantic story, but by no means an uncommon one. But you are not satisfied with this simple interpretation of your friend's disappearance, and you build up some absurd theory of a conspiracy which has no existence except in your own overheated brain. Maria Watson is dead. The Times newspaper declares she is dead. The headstone of her grave bears record of her death. By what right," cried my lady, her voice rising to that shrill and piercing tone peculiar to her when affected by any intense agitation—"by what right, Mr. Holmes, do you come to me, and torment me about John Watson—by what right do you dare to say that his wife is still alive?" 

"By the right of circumstantial evidence, Lady Stamford," answered Sherlock—"by the right of that circumstantial evidence which will sometimes fix the guilt of a man's murder upon that person who, on the first hearing of the case, seems of all other men the most unlikely to be guilty." 

"What circumstantial evidence?" 

"The evidence of time and place. The evidence of handwriting. When Maria Watson left Wildernsea, she sent a letter to a friend she left behind her—a letter in which she declared that she was weary of her old life, and that she wished to seek a new home and a new fortune. That letter is in my possession." 

"Indeed." 

"Shall I tell you whose handwriting resembles that of Maria Watson so closely, that the most dexterous expert could perceive no distinction between the two?" 

"A resemblance between the handwriting of two women is no very uncommon circumstance now-a-days," replied my lady carelessly. "I could show you the caligraphies of half-a-dozen female correspondents, and defy you to discover any great difference in them." 

"But what if the handwriting is a very uncommon one, presenting marked peculiarities by which it may be recognized among a hundred?" 

"Why, in that case the coincidence is rather curious," answered my lady; "but it is nothing more than a coincidence." 

"But if a series of such coincidences lead up to the same point," said Sherlock. "Maria Watson left her home, according to the declaration in her own handwriting, because she was weary of her old life, and wished to begin a new one. Do you know what I infer from this?" 

My lady shrugged her shoulders. 

"I have not the least idea," she said; "and as you have detained me in this gloomy place nearly half-an-hour, I must beg that you will release me, and let me go and dress for dinner." 

"No, Lady Stamford," answered Sherlock, with a cold sternness that was so strange to him as to transform him into another creature—a pitiless embodiment of justice, a cruel instrument of retribution—"no, Lady Stamford," he repeated, "I have told you that prevarication will not help you; I tell you now that defiance will not serve you. I have dealt fairly with you, and have given you fair warning. I gave you indirect notice of your danger two months ago." 

"What do you mean?" asked my lady, suddenly. 

"You did not choose to take that warning, Lady Stamford," pursued Sherlock, "and the time has come in which I must speak very plainly to you. Do you think the gifts which you have played against fortune are to hold you exempt from retribution? No, my lady, your youth and beauty, your grace and refinement, only make the horrible secret of your life more horrible. I tell you that the evidence against you wants only one link to be strong enough for your condemnation, and that link shall be added. Maria Watson went away from the humble shelter of her husband with the declared intention of washing her hands of that old life. What do people generally do when they wish to begin a new existence—to start for a second time in the race of life, free from the incumbrances that had fettered their first journey? They change their names, Lady Stamford. Maria Watson disappeared after her child died, in 18--. She reappeared as Mary Morstan, the friendless girl who undertook a profitless duty in consideration of a home in which she was asked no questions." 

"You are mad, Mr. Holmes!" cried my lady. "You are mad, and my husband shall protect me from your insolence. What if this Maria Watson ran away from her home upon one day, and I entered my employer's house upon another, what does that prove?" 

"By itself, very little," replied Sherlock Holmes; "but with the help of other evidence—" 

"What evidence?" 

"The evidence of two labels, pasted one over the other, upon a box left by you in possession of Mrs. Vincent, the upper label bearing the name of Miss Morstan, the lower that of Mrs. John Watson." 

My lady was silent. Sherlock Holmes could not see her face in the dusk, but he could see that her two small hands were clasped convulsively over her heart, and he knew that the shot had gone home to its mark. 

"God help her, poor, wretched creature," he thought. "She knows now that she is lost. I wonder if the judges of the land feel as I do now when they put on the black cap and pass sentence of death upon some poor, shivering wretch, who has never done them any wrong. Do they feel a heroic fervor of virtuous indignation, or do they suffer this dull anguish which gnaws my vitals as I talk to this helpless woman?" 

He walked by my lady's side, silently, for some minutes. They had been pacing up and down the dim avenue, and they were now drawing near the leafless shrubbery at one end of the lime-walk—the shrubbery in which the ruined well sheltered its unheeded decay among the tangled masses of briery underwood. 

A winding pathway, neglected and half-choked with weeds, led toward this well. Sherlock left the lime-walk, and struck into this pathway. There was more light in the shrubbery than in the avenue, and Mr. Holmes wished to see my lady's face. 

He did not speak until they reached the patch of rank grass beside the well. The massive brickwork had fallen away here and there, and loose fragments of masonry lay buried amidst weeds and briars. The heavy posts which had supported the wooden roller still remained, but the iron spindle had been dragged from its socket and lay a few paces from the well, rusty, discolored, and forgotten. 

Sherlock Holmes leaned against one of the moss-grown posts and looked down at my lady's face, very pale in the chill winter twilight. The moon had newly risen, a feebly luminous crescent in the gray heavens, and a faint, ghostly light mingled with the misty shadows of the declining day. My lady's face seemed like that face which Sherlock Holmes had seen in his dreams looking out of the white foam-flakes on the green sea waves and luring his friend to destruction. 

"Those two labels are in my possession, Lady Stamford," he resumed. "I took them from the box left by you at Crescent Villas. I took them in the presence of Mrs. Vincent and Miss Donovan. Have you any proofs to offer against this evidence? You say to me, 'I am Mary Morstan and I have nothing whatever to do with Maria Watson.' In that case you will produce witnesses who will declare your antecedents. Where had you been living prior to your appearance at Crescent Villas? You must have friends, relations, connections, who can come forward to prove as much as this for you? If you were the most desolate creature upon this earth, you would be able to point to someone who could identify you with the past." 

"Yes," cried my lady, "if I were placed in a criminal dock I could, no doubt, bring forward witnesses to refute your absurd accusation. But I am not in a criminal dock, Mr. Holmes, and I do not choose to do anything but laugh at your ridiculous folly. I tell you that you are mad! If you please to say that Maria Watson is not dead, and that I am Maria Watson, you may do so. If you choose to go wandering about in the places in which I have lived, and to the places in which this Mrs. Watson has lived, you must follow the bent of your own inclination, but I would warn you that such fancies have sometimes conducted people, as apparently sane as yourself, to the life-long imprisonment of a private lunatic-asylum." 

Sherlock Holmes started and recoiled a few paces among the weeds and brushwood as my lady said this. 

"She would be capable of any new crime to shield her from the consequences of the old one," he thought. "She would be capable of using her influence with Sir Michael to place me in a mad-house." 

Sherlock Holmes was not a coward, but still a shiver of horror, something akin to fear, chilled him to the heart. What if this woman's hellish power of dissimulation should be stronger than the truth, and crush him? She had not spared John Watson when he stood in her way and menaced her with a certain peril; would she spare him who threatened her with a far greater danger? Sherlock Holmes looked at the pale face of the woman standing by his side; that fair and beautiful face, illumined by starry-blue eyes, that had a strange and surely a dangerous light in them; and remembering a hundred stories of perfidy, shuddered as he thought how unequal the struggle might be between himself and Lady Stamford. 

"I have shown her my cards," he thought, "but she has kept hers hidden from me. The mask that she wears is not to be plucked away. Sir Michael would rather think me mad than believe her guilty." 

The pale face of Harriet Watson—that grave and earnest face, so different in its character to my lady's fragile beauty—arose before him. 

"What a coward I am to think of myself or my own danger," he thought. "The more I see of this woman the more reason I have to dread her influence upon others; the more reason to wish her far away from this house." 

He looked about him in the dusky obscurity. The lonely garden was as quiet as some solitary grave-yard, walled in and hidden away from the world of the living. 

"It was somewhere in this garden that she met John Watson upon the day of his disappearance," he thought. "I wonder where it was they met; I wonder where it was that he looked into her cruel face and taxed her with her falsehood?" 

My lady, with her little hand resting lightly upon the opposite post to that against which Sherlock leaned, toyed with her pretty foot among the long weeds, but kept a furtive watch upon her enemy's face. 

"It is to be a duel to the death, then, my lady," said Sherlock Holmes, solemnly. "You refuse to accept my warning. You refuse to run away and repent of your wickedness in some foreign place, far from the generous gentleman you have deceived and fooled by your false witcheries. You choose to remain here and defy me." 

"I do," answered Lady Stamford, lifting her head and looking full at the young barrister. "It is no fault of mine if my husband's young friend goes mad, and chooses me for the victim of his monomania." 

"So be it, then, my lady," answered Sherlock. "John Watson was last seen entering these gardens by the little iron gate by which we came in to-night. He was last heard inquiring for you. He was seen to enter these gardens, but he was never seen to leave them. I believe that he met his death within the boundary of these grounds; and that his body lies hidden below some quiet water, or in some forgotten corner of this place. I will have such a search made as shall level that house to the earth and root up every tree in these gardens, rather than I will fail in finding the grave of my murdered friend." 

Mary Stamford uttered a long, low, wailing cry, and threw up her arms above her head with a wild gesture of despair, but she made no answer to the ghastly charge of her accuser. Her arms slowly dropped, and she stood staring at Sherlock Holmes, her white face gleaming through the dusk, her blue eyes glittering and dilated. 

"You shall never live to do this," she said. "I will kill you first. Why have you tormented me so? Why could you not let me alone? What harm had I ever done you that you should make yourself my persecutor, and dog my steps, and watch my looks, and play the spy upon me? Do you want to drive me mad? Do you know what it is to wrestle with a mad-woman? No," cried my lady, with a laugh, "you do not, or you would never—" 

She stopped abruptly and drew herself suddenly to her fullest hight. It was the same action which Sherlock had seen in the old half-drunken lieutenant; and it had that same dignity—the sublimity of extreme misery. 

"Go away, Mr. Holmes," she said. "You are mad, I tell you, you are mad." 

"I am going, my lady," answered Sherlock, quietly. "I would have ignored your crimes out of pity to your wretchedness, had you fled. You have refused to accept my mercy. I wished to have pity upon the living. I shall henceforth only remember my duty to the dead." 

He walked away from the lonely well under the shadow of the limes. My lady followed him slowly down that long, gloomy avenue, and across the rustic bridge to the iron gate. As he passed through the gate, Molly came out of a little half-glass door that opened from an oak-paneled breakfast-room at one angle of the house, and met him upon the threshold of the gateway. 

"I have been looking for you everywhere, Sherlock," she said. "Papa has come down to the library, and will be glad to see you." 

The young man started at the sound of her fresh young voice. "Good Heaven!" he thought, "can these two women be of the same clay? Can this frank, generous-hearted girl, who cannot conceal any impulse of her innocent nature, be of the same flesh and blood as that wretched creature whose shadow falls upon the path beside me!" 

He looked from Molly to Lady Stamford, who stood near the gateway, waiting for him to stand aside and let her pass him. 

"I don't know what has come over Mr. Holmes, my dear Molly," said my lady. "He is so absent-minded and eccentric as to be quite beyond my comprehension." 

"Indeed," exclaimed Miss Stamford; "and yet I should imagine, from the length of your tête-a-tête, that you had made some effort to understand him." 

"Oh, yes," said Sherlock, quietly, "my lady and I understand each other very well; but as it is growing late I will wish you good-evening, ladies. I shall sleep to-night at The Castle Inn, as I have some business to attend to up there, and I will come down and see Sir Michael to-morrow." 

"What, Sherlock," cried Molly, "you surely won't go away without seeing papa?" 

"Yes, my dear," answered the young man. "I am a little disturbed by some disagreeable business in which I am very much concerned, and I would rather not see him just now. Good-night, Molly. I will come or write to-morrow." 

He pressed her hand, bowed to Lady Stamford, and walked away under the black shadows of the archway, and out into the quiet avenue beyond the Court. 

My lady and Molly stood watching him until he was out of sight. 

"What in goodness' name is the matter with our Sherlock?" exclaimed Miss Stamford, impatiently, as the barrister disappeared. "What does he mean by these absurd goings-on? Some disagreeable business that disturbs him, indeed! I suppose the unhappy creature has had a brief forced upon him by some evil-starred attorney, and is sinking into a state of imbecility from a dim consciousness of his own incompetence." 

"Have you ever studied his character, Molly?" asked my lady, very seriously, after a pause. 

"Studied his character! No, Lady Stamford. Why should I?" said Molly. "There is very little study required to convince anybody that he is a selfish, disagreeable person who cares for nothing in the world except his own interests." 

"But have you never thought him eccentric?" 

"Eccentric!" repeated Molly, pursing up her red lips and shrugging up her shoulders. "Well, yes—I believe that is the excuse generally made for such people. Of course he is eccentric." 

"I have never heard you speak of his father and mother," said my lady, thoughtfully. "Do you remember them?" 

"I never saw his mother. She was a Miss Dalrymple, a very dashing girl, who ran away with Holmes Senior, and lost a very handsome fortune in consequence. She died at Nice when poor Sherlock was five years old." 

"Did you ever hear anything particular about her?" 

"How do you mean 'particular?'" asked Molly. 

"Did you ever hear that she was eccentric—what people call 'odd?'" 

"Oh, no," said Molly, laughing. "She was a very reasonable woman, I believe, though she did marry for love. But you must remember that she died before I was born, and I have not, therefore, felt very much curiosity about her." 

"But you recollect Sherlock’s father, I suppose." 

"Oh, yes, I remember him very well, indeed," Molly replied. He was like an uncle to me, and our families have been close, as you see, ever since. 

"Was he eccentric—I mean to say, peculiar in his habits, like Sherlock?" 

"Yes, I believe Sherlock inherits all his absurdities from his father, who expressed the same indifference for his fellow-creatures as his son, but as he was a good husband, an affectionate father, and a kind master, nobody ever challenged his opinions." 

"But he was eccentric?" 

"Yes; I suppose he was generally thought a little eccentric." 

"Ah," said my lady, gravely, "I thought as much. Do you know, Molly, that madness is more often transmitted from father to daughter, and from mother to daughter than from mother to son? Sherlock Holmes is a very handsome young man, and I believe, a very good-hearted young man, but he must be watched, Molly, for he is mad!" 

"Mad!" cried Miss Stamford, indignantly; "you are dreaming, my lady, or—or—you are trying to frighten me," added the young lady, with considerable alarm. 

"I only wish to put you on your guard, Molly," answered my lady. "Mr. Holmes may be as you say, merely eccentric; but he has talked to me this evening in a manner that has filled me with absolute terror, and I believe that he is going mad. I shall speak very seriously to Sir Michael this very night." 

"Speak to papa," exclaimed Molly; "you surely won't distress papa by suggesting such a possibility!" 

"I shall only put him on his guard, my dear Molly." 

"But he'll never believe you," said Miss Stamford; "he will laugh at such an idea." 

"No, Molly; he will believe anything that I tell him," answered my lady, with a quiet smile. 

* * * * *

Lady Stamford went from the garden to the library, a pleasant, oak-paneled, homely apartment in which Sir Michael liked to sit reading or writing, or arranging the business of his estate with his steward, a stalwart countryman, half agriculturalist, half lawyer, who rented a small farm a few miles from the Court. 

The baronet was seated in a capacious easy-chair near the hearth. The bright blaze of the fire rose and fell, flashing now upon the polished carvings of the black-oak bookcase, now upon the gold and scarlet bindings of the books; sometimes glimmering upon the Athenian helmet of a marble Pallas, sometimes lighting up the forehead of Sir Robert Peel. 

The lamp upon the reading-table had not yet been lighted, and Sir Michael sat in the firelight waiting for the coming of his young wife. 

The door opened while he was thinking of this fondly-loved wife, and looking up, the baronet saw the slender form standing in the doorway. 

"Why, my darling!" he exclaimed, as my lady closed the door behind her, and came toward his chair, "I have been thinking of you and waiting for you for an hour. Where have you been, and what have you been doing?" 

My lady, standing in the shadow rather than the light, paused a few moments before replying to this question. 

"I have been to Chelmsford," she said, "shopping; and—" 

She hesitated—twisting her bonnet strings in her thin white fingers with an air of pretty embarrassment. 

"And what, my dear?" asked the baronet—"what have you been doing since you came from Chelmsford? I heard a carriage stop at the door an hour ago. It was yours, was it not?" 

"Yes, I came home an hour ago," answered my lady, with the same air of embarrassment. 

"And what have you been doing since you came home?" 

Sir Michael Stamford asked this question with a slightly reproachful accent. His young wife's presence made the sunshine of his life; and though he would not chain her to his side, it grieved him to think that she could willingly remain unnecessarily absent from him, frittering away her time in some childish talk or frivolous occupation. 

"What have you been doing since you came home, my dear?" he repeated. "What has kept you so long away from me?" 

"I have been—talking—to—Mr. Sherlock Holmes." 

She still twisted her bonnet-string round and round her fingers. 

She still spoke with the same air of embarrassment. 

"Sherlock!" exclaimed the baronet; "is Sherlock here?" 

"He was here a little while ago." 

"And is here still, I suppose?" 

"No, he has gone away." 

"Gone away!" cried Sir Michael. "What do you mean, my darling?" 

"I mean that he came to the Court this afternoon. Molly and I found him idling about the gardens. He stayed here till about a quarter of an hour ago talking to me, and then he hurried off without a word of explanation; except, indeed, some ridiculous excuse about business at the Castle Inn." 

"Business at the Castle Inn! Why, what business can he possibly have in that out-of-the-way place? He has gone there to sleep, I suppose? 

"Yes; I think he said something to that effect." 

"Upon my word," exclaimed the baronet, "I think that boy is half mad." 

My lady's face was so much in shadow, that Sir Michael Stamford was unaware of the bright change that came over its sickly pallor as he made this very commonplace observation. A triumphant smile illuminated Mary Stamford's countenance, a smile that plainly said, "It is coming—it is coming; I can twist him which way I like. I can put black before him, and if I say it is white, he will believe me." 

But Sir Michael Stamford in declaring that Sherlock's wits were disordered, merely uttered that commonplace ejaculation which is well-known to have very little meaning. 

My lady threw off her bonnet, and seated herself upon a velvet-covered footstool at Sir Michael's feet. There was nothing studied or affected in this girlish action. It was so natural to Mary Stamford to be childish, that no one would have wished to see her otherwise. It would have seemed as foolish to expect dignified reserve or womanly gravity from this amber-haired siren, as to wish for rich basses amid the clear treble of a sky-lark's song. 

She sat with her pale face turned away from the firelight, and with her hands locked together upon the arm of her husband's easy-chair. They were very restless, these slender white hands. My lady twisted the jeweled fingers in and out of each other as she talked to her husband. 

"I wanted to come to you, you know, dear," said she—"I wanted to come to you directly I got home, but Mr. Holmes insisted upon my stopping to talk to him." 

"But what about, my love?" asked the baronet. "What could Sherlock have to say to you?" 

My lady did not answer this question. Her fair head dropped upon her husband's knee, her rippling, yellow curls fell over her face. 

Sir Michael lifted that beautiful head with his strong hands, and raised my lady's face. The firelight shining on that pale face lit up the large, soft blue eyes and showed them drowned in tears. 

"Mary, Mary!" cried the baronet, "what is the meaning of this? My love, my love! what has happened to distress you in this manner?" 

Lady Stamford tried to speak, but the words died inarticulately upon her trembling lips. A choking sensation in her throat seemed to strangle those false and plausible words, her only armor against her enemies. She could not speak. The agony she had endured silently in the dismal lime-walk had grown too strong for her, and she broke into a tempest of hysterical sobbing. It was no simulated grief that shook her slender frame and tore at her like some ravenous beast that would have rent her piecemeal with its horrible strength. It was a storm of real anguish and terror, of remorse and misery. It was the one wild outcry, in which the woman's better nature triumphed over her siren's art. 

It was not thus that she had meant to fight her terrible duel with Sherlock Holmes. These were not the weapons which she had intended to use; but perhaps no artifice which she could have devised would have served her so well as this one outburst of natural grief. It shook her husband to the very soul. It bewildered and terrified him. It reduced the strong intellect of the man to helpless confusion and perplexity. It struck at the one weak point in a good man's nature. It appealed straight to Sir Michael Stamford's affection for his wife. He rose from his chair, trembling with indignation, and ready to do immediate battle with the person who had caused his wife's grief. 

"Mary," he said, "Mary, I insist upon your telling me what and who has distressed you. I insist upon it. Whoever has annoyed you shall answer to me for your grief. Come, my love, tell me directly what it is." 

He seated himself and bent over the drooping figure at his feet, calming his own agitation in his desire to soothe his wife's distress. 

"Tell me what it is, my dear," he whispered, tenderly. 

The sharp paroxysm had passed away, and my lady looked up. A glittering light shone through the tears in her eyes, and the lines about her pretty rosy mouth, those hard and cruel lines which Sherlock Holmes had observed in the pre-Raphaelite portrait, were plainly visible in the firelight. 

"I am very silly," she said; "but really he has made me quite hysterical." 

"Who—who has made you hysterical?" 

"Mr. Sherlock Holmes." 

"Sherlock," cried the baronet. "Mary, what do you mean?" 

"I told you that Mr. Holmes insisted upon my going into the lime-walk, dear," said my lady. "He wanted to talk to me, he said, and I went, and he said such horrible things that—" 

"What horrible things, Mary?" 

Lady Stamford shuddered, and clung with convulsive fingers to the strong hand that had rested caressingly upon her shoulder. 

"What did he say, Mary?" 

"Oh, my dear love, how can I tell you?" cried my lady. "I know that I shall distress you—or you will laugh at me, and then—" 

"Laugh at you? No, Mary." 

Lady Stamford was silent for a moment. She sat looking straight before her into the fire, with her fingers still locked about her husband's hand. 

"My dear," she said, slowly, hesitating now and then between her words, as if she almost shrunk from uttering them, "have you ever—I am so afraid of vexing you—have you ever thought Mr. Holmes a little—a little—" 

"A little what, my darling?" 

"A little out of his mind?" faltered Lady Stamford. 

"Out of his mind!" cried Sir Michael. "My dear girl, what are you thinking of?" 

"You said just now, dear, that you thought he was half mad." 

"Did I, my love?" said the baronet, laughing. "I don't remember saying it, and it was a mere façon de parler that meant nothing whatever. Sherlock may be a little eccentric, but mad? No." 

"But madness is sometimes hereditary," said my lady. "Mr. Holmes may have inherited—" 

"He has inherited no madness from his father's family," interrupted Sir Michael. "The Holmes family has never peopled private lunatic asylums or fed mad doctors." 

"Nor from his mother's family?" 

"Not to my knowledge. But Mary, tell me, what in Heaven's name has put this idea into your head?" 

"I have been trying to account for his conduct. I can account for it in no other manner. If you had heard the things he said to me to-night, Sir Michael, you too might have thought him mad." 

"But what did he say, Mary?" 

"I can scarcely tell you. You can see how much he has stupefied and bewildered me. I believe he has lived too long alone in those solitary Temple chambers. Perhaps he reads too much, or smokes too much. You know that some physicians declare madness to be a mere illness of the brain—an illness to which any one is subject, and which may be produced by given causes, and cured by given means." 

Lady Stamford's eyes were still fixed upon the burning coals in the wide grate. She spoke as if she had been discussing a subject that she had often heard discussed before. She spoke as if her mind had almost wandered away from the thought of her husband's young friend to the wider question of madness in the abstract. 

"Why should he not be mad?" resumed my lady. "People are insane for years and years before their insanity is found out. They know that they are mad, but they know how to keep their secret; and, perhaps, they may sometimes keep it till they die. Sometimes a paroxysm seizes them, and in an evil hour they betray themselves. They commit a crime, perhaps. The horrible temptation of opportunity assails them; the knife is in their hand, and the unconscious victim by their side. They may conquer the restless demon and go away and die innocent of any violent deed; but they may yield to the horrible temptation—the frightful, passionate, hungry craving for violence and horror. They sometimes yield and are lost." 

Lady Stamford's voice rose as she argued this dreadful question, The hysterical excitement from which she had only just recovered had left its effects upon her, but she controlled herself, and her tone grew calmer as she resumed: 

"Sherlock Holmes is mad," she said, decisively. "What is one of the strangest diagnostics of madness—what is the first appalling sign of mental aberration? The mind becomes stationary; the brain stagnates; the even current of reflection is interrupted; the thinking power of the brain resolves itself into a monotone. As the waters of a tideless pool putrefy by reason of their stagnation, the mind becomes turbid and corrupt through lack of action; and the perpetual reflection upon one subject resolves itself into monomania. Sherlock Holmes is a monomaniac. The disappearance of his friend, John Watson, grieved and bewildered him. He dwelt upon this one idea until he lost the power of thinking of anything else. The one idea looked at perpetually became distorted to his mental vision. Repeat the commonest word in the English language twenty times, and before the twentieth repetition you will have begun to wonder whether the word which you repeat is really the word you mean to utter. Sherlock Holmes has thought of his friend's disappearance until the one idea has done its fatal and unhealthy work. He looks at a common event with a vision that is diseased, and he distorts it into a gloomy horror engendered of his own monomania. If you do not want to make me as mad as he is, you must never let me see him again. He declared to-night that John Watson was murdered in this place, and that he will root up every tree in the garden, and pull down every brick in the house in search for—" 

My lady paused. The words died away upon her lips. She had exhausted herself by the strange energy with which she had spoken. She had been transformed from a frivolous, childish beauty into a woman, strong to argue her own cause and plead her own defense. 

"Pull down this house?" cried the baronet. "John Watson murdered at Stamford Court! Did Sherlock say this, Mary?" 

"He said something of that kind—something that frightened me very much." 

"Then he must be mad," said Sir Michael, gravely. "I'm bewildered by what you tell me. Did he really say this, Mary, or did you misunderstand him?" 

"I—I—don't think I did," faltered my lady. "You saw how frightened I was when I first came in. I should not have been so much agitated if he hadn't said something horrible." 

Lady Stamford had availed herself of the very strongest arguments by which she could help her cause. 

"To be sure, my darling, to be sure," answered the baronet. "What could have put such a horrible fancy into the unhappy boy's head. This Mr. Watson—a perfect stranger to all of us—murdered at Stamford Court! I'll go to The Castle Inn to-night, and see Sherlock. I have known him ever since he was a baby, and I cannot be deceived in him. If there is really anything wrong, he will not be able to conceal it from me." 

My lady shrugged her shoulders. 

"That is rather an open question," she said. "It is generally a stranger who is the first to observe any psychological peculiarity." 

The big words sounded strange from my lady's rosy lips; but her newly-adopted wisdom had a certain quaint prettiness about it, which charmed and bewildered her husband. 

"But you must not go to The Castle Inn, my dear darling," she said, tenderly. "Remember that you are under strict orders to stay in doors until the weather is milder, and the sun shines upon this cruel ice-bound country." 

Sir Michael Stamford sank back in his capacious chair with a sigh of resignation. 

"That's true, Mary," he said; "we must obey Mr. Dawson. I suppose Sherlock will come to see me tomorrow." 

"Yes, dear. I think he said he would." 

"Then we must wait till to-morrow, my darling. I can't believe that there really is anything wrong with the poor boy—I can't believe it, Mary." 

"Then how do you account for his extraordinary delusion about this Mr. Watson?" asked my lady. 

Sir Michael shook his head. 

"I don't know, Mary—I don't know," he answered. "It is always so difficult to believe that any one of the calamities that continually befall our fellow-men will ever happen to us. I can't believe that his mind is impaired—I can't believe it. I—I'll get him to stop here, Mary, and I'll watch him closely. I tell you, my love, if there is anything wrong I am sure to find it out. I can't be mistaken in a young man who has always been the same to me as my own son. But, my darling, why were you so frightened by Sherlock's wild talk? It could not affect you." 

My lady sighed piteously. 

"You must think me very strong-minded, Sir Michael," she said, with rather an injured air, "if you imagine I can hear of these sort of things indifferently. I know I shall never be able to see Mr. Holmes again." 

"And you shall not, my dear—you shall not." 

"You said just now you would have him here," murmured Lady Stamford. 

"But I will not, my darling girl, if his presence annoys you. Good Heaven! Mary, can you imagine for a moment that I have any higher wish than to promote your happiness? I will consult some London physician about Sherlock, and let him discover if there is really anything the matter with him. You shall not be annoyed, Mary." 

"You must think me very unkind, dear," said my lady, "and I know I ought not to be annoyed by the poor fellow; but he really seems to have taken some absurd notion into his head about me." 

"About you, Mary!" cried Sir Michael. 

"Yes, dear. He seems to connect me in some vague manner—which I cannot quite understand—with the disappearance of this Mr. Watson." 

"Impossible, Mary! You must have misunderstood him." 

"I don't think so." 

"Then he must be mad," said the baronet—"he must be mad. I will wait till he goes back to town, and then send some one to his chambers to talk to him. Good Heaven! what a mysterious business this is." 

"I fear I have distressed you, darling," murmured Lady Stamford. 

"Yes, my dear, I am very much distressed by what you have told me; but you were quite right to talk to me frankly about this dreadful business. I must think it over, dearest, and try and decide what is best to be done." 

My lady rose from the low ottoman on which she had been seated. The fire had burned down, and there was only a faint glow of red light in the room. Mary Stamford bent over her husband's chair, and put her lips to his broad forehead. 

"How good you have always been to me, dear," she whispered softly. "You would never let any one influence you against me, would you, dear?" 

"Influence me against you?" repeated the baronet. "No, my love." 

"Because you know, dear," pursued my lady, "there are wicked people as well as mad people in the world, and there may be some persons to whose interest it would be to injure me." 

"They had better not try it, then, my dear," answered Sir Michael; "they would find themselves in rather a dangerous position if they did." 

Lady Stamford laughed aloud, with a gay, triumphant, silvery peal of laughter that vibrated through the quiet room. 

"My own dear darling," she said, "I know you love me. And now I must run away, dear, for it's past seven o'clock. I was engaged to dine at Mrs. Montford's, but I must send a groom with a message of apology, for Mr. Holmes has made me quite unfit for company. I shall stay at home and nurse you, dear. You'll go to bed very early, won't you, and take great care of yourself?" 

"Yes, dear." 

My lady tripped out of the room to give her orders about the message that was to be carried to the house at which she was to have dined. She paused for a moment as she closed the library door—she paused, and laid her hand upon her breast to check the rapid throbbing of her heart. 

"I have been afraid of you, Mr. Sherlock Holmes," she thought; "but my secret will go with me to my grave. The time will come in which you will have cause to be afraid of me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Sunday Summer Serial: thanks to redscudery for the brilliant idea!
> 
> Thursday Teasers posted on my Tumblr (http://doctornerdington.tumblr.com).
> 
> Comments greatly appreciated.
> 
> Next week: "Red Light in the Sky."


	11. Red Light in the Sky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a posthumous collaboration with Mary Elizabeth Braddon; I've adapted her novel Lady Audley's Secret, and retained much of her original structure and language. ALL CREDIT TO HER.
> 
> Chapter rating: explicit.
> 
> Braddon's novel was originally published serially, as this adaptation is. Chapter updates every Sunday throughout the summer!

The division between Lady Stamford and Molly had not become any narrower in the two months which had elapsed since the pleasant Christmas holiday time had been kept at Stamford Court. There was no open warfare between the two women; there was only an armed neutrality, broken every now and then by brief skirmishes and transient wordy tempests. Molly would very much have preferred a hearty pitched battle to this silent and undemonstrative disunion; but it was not very easy to quarrel with my lady. She had soft answers for the turning away of wrath. She could smile bewitchingly at her step-daughter's open petulance, and laugh merrily at the young lady's ill-temper. Perhaps had she been less amiable, had she been more like Molly in disposition, the two ladies might have expended their enmity in one tremendous quarrel, and might ever afterward have been affectionate and friendly. But Mary Stamford would not make war. She carried forward the sum of her dislike, and put it out at a steady rate of interest, until the breach between her step-daughter and herself, widening a little every day, became a great gulf, utterly impassable by olive-branch-bearing doves from either side of the abyss. There can be no reconciliation where there is no open warfare.

But even worse, for Molly, was the feeling that her father was now lost to her. My lady's beaming smiles, my lady's winning words, my lady's radiant glances and bewitching graces had done their work of enchantment, and Sir Michael had grown to look upon his daughter as a somewhat wilful and capricious young person who had behaved with determined unkindness to the wife he loved. 

Poor Molly saw all this, and bore her burden as well as she could. It seemed very hard to be a beautiful and clever heiress, with dogs and horses and servants at her command, and yet to be so much alone in the world as to know of not one friendly ear into which she might pour her sorrows. 

"If Sherlock was good for anything I could have told him how unhappy I am," thought Miss Stamford; "but I may just as well tell Caesar my troubles for any consolation I should get. But as it is, I must content myself with my animals, and with dull but rather sweet letters from Sir Gregory Lestrade." 

She sighed to herself, and turned again to the letter before her. It centred rather more on matters equine than she might generally have preferred, yet she was impressed with his kind solicitude in continuing their correspondence, even after their last, painful parting. She spent the rest of the evening composing a reply in which she found, to her surprise, that she confided rather more of her private thoughts to him than she had intended.

Meanwhile, Sir Michael Stamford obeyed his pretty nurse, and went to bed a little after nine o'clock upon this bleak March evening. Perhaps the baronet's bedroom was about the pleasantest retreat that an invalid could have chosen in such cold and cheerless weather. The dark-green velvet curtains were drawn before the windows and about the ponderous bed. The wood fire burned redly upon the broad hearth. The reading lamp was lighted upon a delicious little table close to Sir Michael's pillow, and a heap of magazines and newspapers had been arranged by my lady's own fair hands for the pleasure of the invalid. 

Lady Stamford sat by the bedside for about ten minutes, talking to her husband, talking very seriously, about this strange and awful question—Sherlock Holmes's lunacy; but at the end of that time she rose and bade her husband good-night. 

She lowered the green silk shade before the reading lamp, adjusting it carefully for the repose of the baronet's eyes. 

"I shall leave you, dear," she said. "If you can sleep, so much the better. If you wish to read, the books and papers are close to you. I will leave the doors between the rooms open, and I shall hear your voice if you call me." 

Lady Stamford went through her dressing-room into the boudoir, where she had sat with her husband since dinner. 

Every evidence of womanly refinement was visible in the elegant chamber. My lady's piano was open, covered with scattered sheets of music and exquisitely-bound collections of scenas and fantasias which no master need have disdained to study. My lady's easel stood near the window, bearing witness to my lady's artistic talent, in the shape of a water-colored sketch of the Court and gardens. My lady's fairy-like embroideries of lace and muslin, rainbow-hued silks, and delicately-tinted wools littered the luxurious apartment; while the looking-glasses, cunningly placed at angles and opposite corners by an artistic upholsterer, multiplied my lady's image, and in that image reflected the most beautiful object in the enchanted chamber. 

Amid all this lamplight, gilding, color, wealth, and beauty, Mary Stamford sat down on a low seat by the fire to think. 

I should be preaching a very stale sermon, and harping upon a very familiar moral, if I were to seize this opportunity of declaiming against art and beauty, because my lady was more wretched in this elegant apartment than many a half-starved seamstress in her dreary garret. She was wretched by reason of a wound which lay too deep for the possibility of any solace from such plasters as wealth and luxury; but her wretchedness was of an abnormal nature, and all the treasures that had been collected for her could have given her no pleasure but one, the pleasure of flinging them into a heap beneath her feet and trampling upon them and destroying them in her cruel despair. There were but few things that would have inspired her with an awful joy, a horrible rejoicing. If Sherlock Holmes, her pitiless enemy, her unrelenting pursuer, had lain dead in the adjoining chamber, she would have exulted over his bier. 

My lady, brooding by the fire in her lonely chamber, with her large, clear blue eyes fixed upon the yawning gulfs of lurid crimson in the burning coals, may have thought of many things very far away from the terribly silent struggle in which she was engaged. She may have thought of long-ago years of childish innocence, childish follies and selfishness, of frivolous sins that had weighed very lightly upon her conscience. Perhaps in that retrospective reverie she recalled that early time in which she had first looked at the world and desired to place her mark on it; to own what she could of it, and imprint the rest of it with her own stamp. In Mary, selfishness and ambition had joined hands and said, "This woman is our slave, let us see what she will become under our guidance." 

My lady twisted her fingers in her loose amber curls, and made as if she would have torn them from her head. 

"I was not wicked when I was young," she thought, as she stared gloomily at the fire, "I was only ambitious. I never did any harm—at least, wilfully. Have I ever been really wicked, I wonder?" she mused. "My worst wickedness has been the result of wild impulses, and not of deeply-laid plots. I am not like the women I have read of, who have lain night after night in the horrible darkness and stillness, planning out treacherous deeds, and arranging every circumstance of an appointed crime. I wonder whether they suffered—those women—whether they ever suffered as—" 

Her thoughts wandered away into a weary maze of confusion. Suddenly she drew herself up with a proud, defiant gesture, and her eyes glittered with a light that was not entirely reflected from the fire. 

"You are mad, Mr. Sherlock Holmes," she said, "you are mad, and your fancies are a madman's fancies. I know what madness is. I know its signs and tokens, and I say that you are mad." 

She put her hand to her head, as if thinking of something which confused and bewildered her, and which she found it difficult to contemplate with calmness. 

"Dare I defy him?" she muttered. "Dare I? Dare I? Will he stop, now that he has once gone so far? Will he stop for fear of me? Will he stop for fear of me, when the thought of what Sir Michael must suffer has not stopped him? Will anything stop him—but death?" 

She pronounced the last words in an awful whisper; and with her head bent forward, her eyes dilated, and her lips still parted as they had been parted in her utterance of that final word "death," she sat blankly staring at the fire. 

The current of her thoughts was interrupted by a cautious knocking at her door. She rose suddenly, startled by any sound in the stillness of her room. She rose, and threw herself into a low chair near the fire. She flung her beautiful head back upon the soft cushions, and took a book from the table near her. Insignificant as this action was, it spoke very plainly. It spoke very plainly of ever-recurring fears—of fatal necessities for concealment—of a mind that in its silent agonies was ever alive to the importance of outward effect. It told more plainly than anything else could have told how complete an actress my lady had been made by the awful necessity of her life. 

The modest rap at the door was repeated. 

"Come in," cried Lady Stamford, in her liveliest tone. 

The door was opened with that respectful noiselessness peculiar to a well-bred servant, and a young woman, plainly dressed, and carrying some of the cold March winds in the folds of her garments, crossed the threshold of the apartment and lingered near the door, waiting permission to approach the inner regions of my lady's retreat. 

It was Jeannine Milverton, the beautiful wife of the Castle Inn innkeeper. 

"I beg pardon, my lady, for intruding without leave," she said; "but I thought I might venture to come straight up without waiting for permission." 

"Yes, yes, Jeannine, to be sure. Take off your bonnet, you wretched, cold-looking creature, and come sit down here with me." 

Lady Stamford held out her arms. "Sit down here, Jeannine," she repeated; "sit down here and talk to me; I'm very glad you came here to-night. I was horribly lonely in this dreary place." 

My lady shivered and looked round at the bright collection of bric-a-brac, as if the Sevres and bronze, the buhl and ormolu, had been the moldering adornments of some ruined castle. The dreary wretchedness of her thoughts had communicated itself to every object about her, and all outer things took their color from that weary inner life which held its slow course of secret anguish in her breast. She had spoken the entire truth in saying that she was glad of her former maid's visit. There were sympathies between her and this girl, who was like herself, inwardly as well as outwardly—so very beautiful, and so eager for her own advancement. Each woman was angry with the lot that had been cast her, and weary of dull dependence. My lady hated Molly for her frank, passionate, generous, daring nature; she hated her step-daughter, and clung to this dark-haired girl, whose ambition, she thought, mirrored her own. 

Jeannine Milverton obeyed her late mistress' commands, and took off her bonnet before seating herself on the ottoman at Lady Stamford's feet. Her smooth bands of dark hair were unruffled by the March winds; her trimly-made drab dress and linen collar were as neatly arranged as they could have been had she only that moment completed her toilet. 

"Sir Michael is better, I hope, my lady," she said, hesitatingly. 

"Yes, Jeannine, much better. He is asleep. You may close that door," added Lady Stamford, with a motion of her head toward the door of communication between the rooms, which had been left open. 

Mrs. Milverton smiled quickly and obeyed, and then returned to her seat; but Lady Stamford put her arms about Jeannine’s small waist and pulled her into a close embrace. The two sat entwined in the soft chair, as they often had before Jeannine’s marriage. 

"I am very, very unhappy, Jeannine," my lady said, fretfully; "wretchedly miserable." 

Jeannine took my lady’s hands and chafed them soothingly between her own. "I am cruelly persecuted and harassed," she continued. "I am pursued and tormented by a man whom I never injured, whom I have never wished to injure. I am never suffered to rest by this relentless tormentor, and—" 

She paused, staring at the fire again, as she had done in her loneliness. Lost again in the dark intricacies of thoughts which wandered hither and thither in a dreadful chaos of terrified bewilderments, she could not come to any fixed conclusion. 

Jeannine Milverton watched my lady's face, looking at her late mistress with dark, anxious eyes, that only relaxed their watchfulness when Lady Stamford's glance met that of her companion. 

"I think I know whom you mean, my lady," the innkeeper's wife said, in a whisper; "I think I know who it is who is so cruel to you." 

"Oh, of course," answered my lady, bitterly; "my secrets are everybody's secrets. You know all about it, no doubt." 

"The person is a gentleman—is he not, my lady?" 

"Yes." 

"A gentleman who came to the Castle Inn two months ago, when I warned you—" 

"Yes, yes," answered my lady, impatiently. 

"I thought so. The same gentleman is at our place to-night, my lady." 

Lady Stamford started up from her chair—started up as if she would have done something desperate in her despairing fury; but she sank back again into Jeannine’s embrace with a weary, querulous sigh. What could she do but run like a hunted hare till she found her way back to the starting-point of the cruel chase, to be there trampled down by her pursuers? 

"I might have known as much,” she said. “He has gone there to wring my secrets from your husband. Fool!" she exclaimed, suddenly turning upon Jeannine in a transport of anger, "do you want to destroy me that you have left those two men together?" 

Mrs. Milverton clasped her hands piteously. 

"I didn't come away of my own free will, my lady," she said; "no one could have been more unwilling to leave the house than I was this night. I was sent here." 

"Who sent you here?" 

"Charlie, my lady. You can't tell how hard he can be upon me if I go against him." 

"Why did he send you?" 

The innkeeper's wife dropped her eyelids under Lady Stamford's angry glances, and hesitated confusedly before she answered this question. 

"Indeed, my lady," she stammered, "I didn't want to come. I told Charlie that it was too bad for us to worry you, first asking this favor, and then asking that, and never leaving you alone for a month together; but—but—he bore me down with his loud, blustering talk, and he made me come." 

"Yes, yes," cried Lady Stamford, impatiently. "I know that. I want to know why you have come." 

"Why, you know, my lady," answered Jeannine, half reluctantly, "Charlie is very extravagant; and all I can say to him, I can't get him to be careful or steady. He's not sober; and when he's drinking with a lot of rough countrymen, and drinking, perhaps even more than they do, it isn't likely that his head can be very clear for accounts. If it hadn't been for me we should have been ruined before this; and hard as I've tried, I haven't been able to keep the ruin off. You remember giving me the money for the brewer's bill, my lady?" 

"Yes, I remember very well," answered Lady Stamford, with a bitter laugh, "for I wanted that money to pay my own bills." 

"I know you did, my lady, and it was very, very hard for me to have to come and ask you for it, after all that we'd received from you before. But that isn't the worst: when Charlie sent me down here to beg the favor of that help he never told me that the Christmas rent was still owing; but it was, my lady, and it's owing now, and—and there's a bailiff in the house to-night, and we're to be sold up to-morrow unless—" 

"Unless I pay your rent, I suppose," cried Mary Stamford. "I might have guessed what was coming." 

"Indeed, indeed, my lady, I wouldn't have asked it," sobbed Jeannine Milverton, pressing her face into my lady’s breast, "but he made me come." 

"Yes," answered my lady, bitterly, "he made you come; and he will make you come whenever he pleases, and whenever he wants money for the gratification of his low vices; and you and he are my pensioners as long as I live, or as long as I have any money to give; for I suppose when my purse is empty and my credit ruined, your husband will turn upon me and sell me to the highest bidder. Do you know, Jeannine, that my jewel-case has been half emptied to meet your claims? Do you know that my pin-money, which I thought such a princely allowance when my marriage settlement was made, and when I was a poor governess at Mr. Dawson's, Heaven help me! My pin-money has been overdrawn half a year to satisfy your demands? What can I do to appease you? Shall I sell my Marie Antoinette cabinet, or my pompadour china, Leroy's and Benson's ormolu clocks, or my Gobelin tapestried chairs and ottomans? How shall I satisfy you next?" 

"Oh, my lady, my lady," cried Jeannine, piteously, "don't be so cruel to me; you know, you know that it isn't I who want to impose upon you." 

"I know nothing," exclaimed Lady Stamford, "except that I am the most miserable of women. Let me think," she cried, silencing Jeannine's consolatory murmurs with an imperious gesture. "Hold your tongue, girl, and let me think of this business, if I can." 

She put her hands to her forehead, clasping her slender fingers across her brow, as if she would have controlled the action of her brain by their convulsive pressure. 

"Sherlock Holmes is with your husband," she said, slowly, speaking to herself rather than to her companion. "These two men are together, and there are bailiffs in the house, and your brutal husband is no doubt brutally drunk by this time, and brutally obstinate and ferocious in his drunkenness. If I refuse to pay this money his ferocity will be multiplied by a hundredfold. There's little use in discussing that matter. The money must be paid." 

"But if you do pay it," said Jeannine, earnestly, "I hope you will impress upon Charlie that it is the last money you will ever give him while he stops in that house." 

"Why?" asked Lady Stamford, letting her hands fall on her lap, and looking inquiringly at Mrs. Milverton. 

"Because I want Charlie to leave the Castle." 

"But why do you want him to leave?" 

"Oh, for ever so many reasons, my lady," answered Jeannine. "He's not fit to be the landlord of a public-house. I didn't know that when I married him, or I would have gone against the business, and tried to persuade him to take to the farming line. Not that I suppose he'd have given up his own fancy, either; for he's obstinate enough, as you know, my lady. He's not fit for his present business. He's scarcely ever sober after dark; and when he's drunk he gets almost wild, and doesn't seem to know what he does. We've had two or three narrow escapes with him already." 

"Narrow escapes!" repeated Lady Stamford. "What do you mean?" 

"Why, we've run the risk of being burnt in our beds through his carelessness." 

"Burnt in your beds through his carelessness! Why, how was that?" asked my lady, rather listlessly. She was too selfish, and too deeply absorbed in her own troubles to take much interest in any danger which had befallen another. 

"You know what a queer old place the Castle is, my lady; all tumble-down wood-work, and rotten rafters, and such like. The Chelmsford Insurance Company won't insure it; for they say if the place did happen to catch fire of a windy night it would blaze away like so much tinder, and nothing in the world could save it. Well, Charlie knows this; and the landlord has warned him of it times and often, for he lives close against us, and he keeps a pretty sharp eye upon all my husband's goings on; but when Charlie's tipsy he doesn't know what he's about, and only a week ago he left a candle burning in one of the out-houses, and the flame caught one of the rafters of the sloping roof, and if it hadn't been for me finding it out when I went round the house the last thing, we should have all been burnt to death, perhaps. And that's the third time the same kind of thing has happened in the six months we've had the place, and you can't wonder that I'm frightened, can you, my lady?" 

My lady had not wondered, she had not thought about the business at all. She had scarcely listened to these commonplace details. Had she not her own terrors, her own soul-absorbing perplexities to usurp every thought of which her brain was capable? 

She did not make any remark upon that which poor Jeannine just told her; she scarcely comprehended what had been said, until some moments after the girl had finished speaking, when the words assumed their full meaning, as some words do after they have been heard without being heeded. 

"Burnt in your beds," said the young lady, at last. "It would have been a good thing for us if that precious creature, your husband, had been burnt in his bed before to-night." 

A vivid picture had flashed upon her as she spoke. The picture of that frail wooden tenement, the Castle Inn, reduced to a roofless chaos of lath and plaster, vomiting flames from its black mouth, and spitting blazing sparks upward toward the cold night sky. 

She gave a weary sigh as she dismissed this image from her restless brain. She would be no better off even if this enemy should be forever silenced. She had another and far more dangerous foe—a foe who was not to be bribed or bought off, though she had been as rich as an empress. 

"I'll give you the money to send this bailiff away," my lady said, after a pause. "I must give you the last sovereign in my purse, but what of that? You know as well as I do that I dare not refuse you." 

Lady Stamford rose and took the lighted lamp from her writing-table. "I will go and fetch it," she said. 

When she returned, she placed the small purse containing the money upon the side table, and resumed her seat, drawing Jeannine to her again. 

They sat together in silence, each oppressed, though in different ways, by the sordidness of their exchange. Eventually, in the silence, Jeannine became aware that my lady’s hand was wandering, quite idly, over her simple bodice. “Ah, Jeannine,” she sighed, suddenly philosophical. “What can you have been thinking, to have done this to yourself? In my day, you were clad in fine bright gowns; your work was light, and we had each other for pleasant companionship. And you have traded it all for drudgery! For this!” her finger traced the coarse stitching of her cheap gown. “And for this!” she cried, he fingers digging cruelly into the bruises that ringed the poor woman’s wrists. “Did I not ever treat you well? Did I not reward you amply? Did I not satisfy you? Even,” and here she lowered her voice, “even as a husband would? Do I not know what you desire?” 

Jeannine took a single, shuddering breath, and my lady bent to kiss the single tear that fell to her cheek. 

“You know what I desire, for you desire it too: we desire everything,” she said quietly. “But this is not love, my lady, and we would not last together. You must own that we are far too similar in temperament and character. You would have cast me off, finally, for some better thing, and I would have been left with nothing …”

She trailed off as my lady’s touch grew bolder. My lady made no answer to Jeannine’s words, which were surely correct. And yet with this beautiful girl in her lap, the world beyond them dimmed, and each woman’s mind turned inexorably to the demands of the flesh; for each had, at times, a single-minded appetite for bodily pleasure that would have shocked her oblivious husband. All unspoken, a question was asked and answered: business and husbands and the concerns of daily life would be put aside for a time, while they satisfied themselves with each other. 

In short order, my lady had Jeannine’s bodice undone; her hand slipped under the coarse fabric, seeking the dark bud she knew lay beneath. She smiled in recognition of the fine muslin of Jeannine’s undershift. She had not abandoned all the luxuries of her old life, then – only those that were visible. 

Jeannine sighed against her, then, and grasped her around the waist as if she was the only anchor holding her to this earth. “Do you think of me when you wear these underthings?” my lady asked, in a strange and possessive tone. “Do you let your brute tear them off you?” But Jeannine made no answer except to arch against her touch.

My lady’s hands grew busier under Jeannine’s bodice; Jeannine began to move restlessly beneath her. At length, with a tiny sigh of frustration, she rose up and turned, straddling my lady’s lap. Jeannine kissed her once, quite hard, on the mouth. “Show me now what I desire,” she whispered, and then she gasped as my lady thrust her hands under her skirts. 

Up and under and in; with a soft moan, Jeannine sank down upon her. My lady toyed with her only briefly before she took up the rhythm she well knew to be the key to Jeannine’s undoing, with each thrust in, seeking that small nub of pleasure that made Jeannine thrash and moan against her. 

Ever mindful of Sir Michael, sleeping fitfully behind the closed door of the antechamber, Jeannine bit her lip and endeavored not to cry out as her mistress worked her to her ultimate pleasure. 

“My lady,” she panted, her face buried in Lady Stamford’s throat. 

And then slowly, bonelessly, she slid down to the floor, coming to rest at my lady’s feet. Jeannine looked up at her mistress’s face, questioningly. Lady Stamford nodded slightly, still imperious, and leaned back into the plush upholstery as Jeannine dove beneath her skirts, disappearing almost completely under layers of rich silk. 

An outside observer, regardless of acuity of sight, might have perceived nothing untoward in the tableau that unfolded in the dimly-lit chamber; it seemed, indeed, that my lady reclined in quiet and solitary repose, and only the flush blooming on her fair cheek and her quickened breath gave any indication of Jeannine’s boldness beneath her skirts. Indeed, they had adopted this position early in their acquaintance – even as fellow servants at Mr. Dawson’s residence – when their privacy was not assured, and the proximity of other servants made them cautious. 

It was not caution, but desire, that drove Jeannine beneath her mistress’s skirts this evening. And she was very bold indeed, moving inexorably up my lady’s legs, and between, nudging them apart insistently until she could press her lovely face into the wet, fragrant heat of her sex. 

Relishing each tiny movement, each indrawn breath from the woman above her, for such was unquestionable evidence of her current power over her mistress, Jeannine kissed at Lady Stamford’s most secret place, pushing back forcefully with each small thrust of my lady’s hips against her. Her kisses were far from chaste, and further still from the perfunctory acts she had learned to perform on her husband’s comparatively insensate body. 

“Faster now,” my lady hissed under her breath, “and hard.” 

Jeannine abandoned then all restraint; nimble fingers and skilled mouth all turned to her mistress’s pleasure; faster and faster, moving in concert with my lady’s upward thrusts until – with a profound sigh and a sudden stillness, my lady found her pleasure. 

Jeannine, quite breathless herself, did not hurry to extricate herself from the pleasant embrace of my lady’s limbs. She was happy to think, for a moment, at least, no further than the boundaries demarcated by my lady’s skirts. How pleasant her life would be, she thought, if she had no cares but to look to her own interests, her own enjoyment. 

But such was not her fate. She sat back at last, reluctantly, and my lady pulled her up beside her on the couch, absently kissing the evidence of her satisfaction from Jeannine’s smooth mouth. 

They reclined against each other, ravenous women both, and sated for a time each knew would be short. “Ah Jeannine,” my lady sighed at last, and her fingers twisted her own pale ringlets almost convulsively together with Jeannine’s dark locks, “this world is not made for women such as we.” And then a sort of paralysis descended upon them both, a feeling of melancholy languor which prevented either from carrying on with her evening obligations, and left them staring vacantly into the fire.

"Oh, my lady," exclaimed Jeannine, suddenly, "I forgot something; you quite distracted me." 

"Forgot what?" 

"A letter that was given me to bring to you, my lady, just before I left home." 

"What letter?" 

"A letter from Mr. Holmes. He heard my husband mention that I was coming down here, and he asked me to carry this letter." 

Lady Stamford sat up abruptly and straightened her gown. She lit the lamp upon the table nearest to her, and held out her hand to receive the letter. Jeannine could scarcely fail to observe that the little jeweled hand, so recently bent to her pleasure, shook like a leaf. 

"Give it me—give it me," she cried; "let me see what more he has to say." 

Lady Stamford almost snatched the letter from Jeannine's hand in her wild impatience. She tore open the envelope and flung it from her; she could scarcely unfold the sheet of note-paper in her eager excitement. 

The letter was very brief. It contained only these words: 

"Should Mrs. John Watson really have survived the date of her supposed death, as recorded in the public prints, and upon the tombstone in Portsmouth churchyard, and should she exist in the person of the lady suspected and accused by the writer of this, there can be no great difficulty in finding someone able and willing to identify her. Several such people have already been located in Wildernsea who would no doubt consent to throw some light upon this matter; either to dispel a delusion or to confirm a suspicion.  
SHERLOCK HOLMES.  
March 3, 18--.  
The Castle Inn." 

My lady crushed the letter fiercely in her hand, and flung it from her into the flames. 

"If he stood before me now, and I could kill him," she muttered in a strange, inward whisper, "I would do it—I would do it!" She snatched up the lamp and rushed into the adjoining room. She shut the door behind her. She could not endure any witness of her horrible despair—she could endure nothing, neither herself nor her surroundings. 

In the dim light of the night lamp, the baronet slept peacefully, his noble face plainly visible. His breathing was low and regular, his lips curved into a half smile—a smile of tender happiness which he often wore when he looked at his beautiful wife, the smile of an all-indulgent father, who looks admiringly at his favorite child. 

Some touch of gentle feeling, some sentiment of compassion softened Lady Stamford's glance as it fell upon that noble, reposing figure. For a moment the horrible egotism of her own misery yielded to her pitying tenderness for another. It was perhaps only a semi-selfish tenderness after all, in which pity for herself was as powerful as pity for her husband; but for once in a way, her thoughts ran out of the narrow groove of her own terrors and her own troubles to dwell with prophetic grief upon the coming sorrows of another. "If they make him believe, how wretched he will be," she thought. 

She paced up and down the room in the silvery lamplight, pondering upon the strange letter which she had received from Sherlock Holmes. She walked backward and forward in that monotonous wandering for some time before she was able to steady her thoughts—before she was able to bring the scattered forces of her intellect to bear upon the one all-important subject of the threat contained in the barrister's letter. 

"He will do it," she said, between her set teeth—"he will do it, unless I get him into a lunatic-asylum first; or unless—" 

She did not finish the thought in words. She did not even think out the sentence; but some new and unnatural impulse in her heart seemed to beat each syllable against her breast. 

The thought was this: "He will do it, unless some strange calamity befalls him, and silences him forever." The red blood flashed up into my lady's face with as sudden and transient a blaze as the flickering flame of a fire, and died as suddenly away, leaving her more pale than winter snow. Her hands, which had before been locked convulsively together, fell apart and dropped heavily at her sides. She stopped in her rapid pacing to and fro—stopped as Lot's wife may have stopped, after that fatal backward glance at the perishing city—with every pulse slackening, with every drop of blood congealing in her veins, in the terrible process that was to transform her from a woman into a statue. 

Lady Stamford stood still for about five minutes in that strangely statuesque attitude, her head erect, her eyes staring straight before her—staring far beyond the narrow boundary of her chamber wall, into dark distances of peril and horror. 

But by-and-by she started from that rigid attitude almost as abruptly as she had fallen into it. She walked rapidly to her dressing-table, and, seating herself before it, pushed away the litter of golden-stoppered bottles and delicate china essence-boxes, and looked at her reflection in the large, oval glass. She was very pale; but there was no other trace of agitation visible in her girlish face. The lines of her exquisitely molded lips were so beautiful, that it was only a very close observer who could have perceived a certain rigidity that was unusual to them. She saw this herself, and tried to smile away that statue-like immobility: but to-night the rosy lips refused to obey her; they were firmly locked, and were no longer the slaves of her will and pleasure. All the latent forces of her character concentrated themselves in this one feature. She might command her eyes, but she could not control the muscles of her mouth. She rose from before her dressing-table, and took a dark velvet cloak and bonnet from the recesses of her wardrobe, and dressed herself for walking. The little ormolu clock on the chimney-piece struck the quarter after eleven while Lady Stamford was employed in this manner; five minutes afterward she re-entered the room in which she had left Jeannine Milverton. 

The innkeeper's wife was sitting before the low fender very much in the same attitude as that in which her late mistress had brooded over that lonely hearth earlier in the evening. Jeannine had replenished the fire, and had reassumed her bonnet and shawl. She was anxious to get home to that brutal husband, who was only too apt to fall into some mischief in her absence. She looked up as Lady Stamford entered the room, and uttered an exclamation of surprise at seeing her late mistress in a walking-costume. 

"My lady," she cried, "you are not going out to-night?" 

"Yes, I am, Jeannine," Lady Stamford answered, very quietly. "I am going to Castle Inn with you to see this bailiff, and to pay and dismiss him myself." 

"But, my lady, you forget what the time is; you can't go out at such an hour. You can’t be seen!" 

Lady Stamford did not answer. She stood with her finger resting lightly upon the handle of the bell, meditating quietly. 

"The stables are always locked, and the men in bed by ten o'clock," she murmured, "when we are at home. It will make a terrible hubbub to get a carriage ready; but yet I dare say one of the servants could manage the matter quietly for me." 

"But why should you go to-night, my lady?" cried Jeannine Milverton. "To-morrow will do quite as well. A week hence will do as well. Our landlord would take the man away if he had your promise to settle the debt." 

Lady Stamford took no notice of this interruption. She went hastily into the dressing-room, and flung off her bonnet and cloak, and then returned to the boudoir, in her simple dinner-costume, with her curls brushed carelessly away from her face. 

"Now, Jeannine Milverton, listen to me," she said, grasping her confidante's already-bruised wrist, and speaking in a low, earnest voice, but with a certain imperious air that challenged contradiction and commanded obedience. "Listen to me, Jeannine," she repeated. "I am going to the Castle Inn to-night; whether it is early or late is of very little consequence to me; I have set my mind upon going, and I shall go. You have asked me why, and I have told you. I am going in order that I may pay this debt myself; and that I may see for myself that the money I give is applied to the purpose for which I give it. There is nothing out of the common course of life in my doing this. I am going to do what other women in my position very often do. I am going to assist a favorite servant." 

"But it's getting on for twelve o'clock, my lady," pleaded Jeannine. 

Lady Stamford frowned impatiently at this interruption. 

"If my going to your house to pay this man should be known," she continued, still retaining her hold of Jeannine's bruised wrist, "I am ready to answer for my conduct; but I would rather that the business should be kept quiet. I think that I can leave this house without being seen by any living creature, if you will do as I tell you." 

"I will do anything you wish, my lady," answered Jeannine. “You know I will.”

"Then you will wish me good-night presently, when my maid comes into the room, and you will suffer her to show you out of the house. You will cross the courtyard and wait for me in the avenue upon the other side of the archway. It may be half an hour before I am able to join you, for I must not leave my room till the servants have all gone to bed, but you may wait for me patiently, for come what may I will join you." 

Lady Stamford's face was no longer pale. An unnatural luster gleamed in her great blue eyes. She spoke with an unnatural rapidity. She had altogether the appearance and manner of a person who has yielded to the dominant influence of some overpowering excitement. Jeannine Milverton stared at her late mistress in mute bewilderment. She began to fear that my lady was going mad. 

The bell which Lady Stamford rang was answered by the smart lady's-maid who wore rose-colored ribbons, and black silk gowns, and other adornments which were unknown to the humble people who sat below the salt in the good old days when servants wore linsey-woolsey. 

"I did not know that it was so late, Martin," said my lady, in that gentle tone which always won for her the willing service of her inferiors. "I have been talking with Mrs. Milverton and have let the time slip by me. I sha'n't want anything to-night, so you may go to bed when you please." 

"Thank you, my lady," answered the girl, who looked very sleepy, and had some difficulty in repressing a yawn even in her mistress' presence, for the Stamford household usually kept very early hours. "I'd better show Mrs. Milverton out, my lady, hadn't I?" asked the maid, "before I go to bed?" 

"Oh, yes, to be sure; you can let Jeannine out. All the other servants have gone to bed, then, I suppose?" 

"Yes, my lady." 

Lady Stamford laughed as she glanced at the timepiece. 

"We have been terrible dissipated up here, Jeannine," she said. "Good-night. You may tell your husband that his rent shall be paid." 

"Thank you very much, my lady, and good-night," murmured Jeannine as she backed out of the room, followed by the lady's maid. 

Lady Stamford listened at the door, waiting till the muffled sounds of their footsteps died away in the octagon chamber and on the carpeted staircase. 

"Martin sleeps at the top of the house," she said, "half a mile away from this room. In ten minutes I may safely make my escape." 

She went back into her dressing-room, and put on her cloak and bonnet for the second time. The unnatural color still burnt like a flame in her cheeks; the unnatural light still glittered in her eyes. The excitement which she was under held her in so strong a spell that neither her mind nor her body seemed to have any consciousness of fatigue. However verbose I may be in my description of her feelings, I can never describe a tithe of her thoughts or her sufferings. She suffered agonies that would fill closely printed volumes, bulky with a thousand pages, in that one horrible night. She underwent volumes of anguish, and doubt, and perplexity; sometimes repeating the same chapters of her torments over and over again; sometimes hurrying through a thousand pages of her misery without one pause, without one moment of breathing time. She stood by the low fender in her boudoir, watching the minute-hand of the clock, and waiting till it should be time for her to leave the house in safety. 

"I will wait ten minutes," she said, "not a moment beyond, before I enter on my new peril." 

She listened to the wild roaring of the March wind, which seemed to have risen with the stillness and darkness of the night. 

The hand slowly made its inevitable way to the figures which told that the ten minutes were past. It was exactly a quarter to twelve when my lady took her lamp in her hand, and stole softly from the room. Her footfall was as light as that of some graceful wild animal, and there was no fear of that airy step awakening any echo upon the carpeted stone corridors and staircase. She did not pause until she reached the vestibule upon the ground floor. Several doors opened out of the vestibule, which was octagon, like my lady's ante-chamber. One of these doors led into the library, and it was this door which Lady Stamford opened softly and cautiously. 

To have attempted to leave the house secretly by any of the principal outlets would have been simple madness, for the housekeeper herself superintended the barricading of the great doors, back and front. The secrets of the bolts, and bars, and chains, and bells which secured these doors, and provided for the safety of Sir Michael Stamford's plate-room, the door of which was lined with sheet-iron, were known only to the servants who had to deal with them. But although all these precautions were taken with the principal entrances to the citadel, a wooden shutter and a slender iron bar, light enough to be lifted by a child, were considered sufficient safeguard for the half-glass door which opened out of the breakfast-room into the graveled pathway and smooth turf in the courtyard. 

It was by this outlet that Lady Stamford meant to make her escape. She could easily remove the bar and unfasten the shutter, and she might safely venture to leave the window ajar while she was absent. There was little fear of Sir Michael's awaking for some time, as he was a heavy sleeper in the early part of the night, and had slept more heavily than usual since his illness. 

Lady Stamford crossed the library, and opened the door of the breakfast-room, which communicated with it. This latter apartment was one of the later additions to the Court. It was a simple, cheerful chamber, with brightly papered walls and pretty maple furniture, and was more occupied by Molly than any one else. The paraphernalia of that young lady's favorite pursuits were scattered about the room—drawing-materials, unfinished scraps of work, tangled skeins of silk, and all the other tokens of a careless damsel's presence; while Miss Stamford's picture—a pretty crayon sketch of a rosy-faced hoyden in a riding-habit and hat—hung over the quaint Wedgewood ornaments on the chimneypiece. My lady looked upon these familiar objects with scornful hatred flaming in her blue eyes. 

"How glad she will be if any disgrace befalls me," she thought; "how she will rejoice if I am driven out of this house!" 

Lady Stamford set the lamp upon a table near the fireplace, and went to the window. She removed the iron-bar and the light wooden shutter, and then opened the glass-door. The March night was black and moonless, and a gust of wind blew in upon her as she opened this door, and filled the room with its chilly breath, extinguishing the lamp upon the table. 

"No matter," my lady muttered, "I could not have left it burning. I shall know how to find my way through the house when I come back. I have left all the doors ajar." 

She stepped quickly out upon the smooth gravel, and closed the glass-door behind her. She was afraid lest that treacherous wind should blow-to the door opening into the library, and thus betray her. 

She was in the quadrangle now, with that chill wind sweeping against her, and swirling her silken garments round her with a shrill, rustling noise, like the whistling of a sharp breeze against the sails of a yacht. She crossed the quadrangle and looked back—looked back for a moment at the firelight gleaming between the rosy-tinted curtains in her boudoir, and the dim gleam of the lamp through the mullioned windows in the room where Sir Michael Stamford lay asleep. 

"I feel as if I were running away," she thought; "I feel as if I were running away secretly in the dead of the night, to lose myself and be forgotten. Perhaps it would be wiser in me to run away, to take this man's warning, and escape out of his power forever. If I were to run away and disappear as—as John Watson disappeared. But where could I go? What would become of me? I have no money; my jewels are not worth a couple of hundred pounds, now that I have got rid of the best part of them. What could I do? I must go back to the old life, the old, hard, cruel, wretched life—the life of poverty, and stagnation. I should have to go back and wear myself out in that long struggle, and die—as my mother died, perhaps!" 

My lady stood still for a moment on the smooth lawn between the quadrangle and the archway, with her head drooping upon her breast and her hands locked together, debating this question in the unnatural activity of her mind. Her attitude reflected the state of that mind—it expressed irresolution and perplexity. But presently a sudden change came over her; she lifted her head—lifted it with an action of defiance and determination. 

"No! Mr. Sherlock Holmes," she said, aloud, in a low, clear voice; "I will not go back—I will not go back. If the struggle between us is to be a duel to the death, you shall not find me drop my weapon." 

She walked with a firm and rapid step under the archway. As she passed under that massive arch, it seemed as if she disappeared into some black gulf that had waited open to receive her. The stupid clock struck twelve, and the whole archway seemed to vibrate under its heavy strokes, as Lady Stamford emerged upon the other side and joined Jeannine Milverton, who had waited for her late mistress very near the gateway of the Court. 

"Now, Jeannine," she said, "it is three miles from here to Castle Inn, isn't it?" 

"Yes, my lady." 

"Then we can walk the distance in an hour and a half." 

Lady Stamford had not stopped to say this; she was walking quickly along the avenue with her humble companion by her side. Fragile and delicate as she was in appearance, she was a very good walker. She had been in the habit of taking long country rambles with Mr. Dawson's children in her old days of dependence, and she thought very little of a distance of three miles. 

"Your beautiful husband will sit up for you, I suppose, Jeannine?" she said, as they struck across an open field that was used as a short cut from Stamford Court to the high-road. 

"Oh, yes, my lady; he's sure to sit up. He'll be drinking with the man, I dare say." 

"The man! What man?" 

"The bill collector, my lady." 

"Ah, to be sure," said Lady Stamford, indifferently. 

It was strange that Jeannine's domestic troubles should seem so very far away from her thoughts at the time she was taking such an extraordinary step toward setting things right at the Castle Inn. 

The two women crossed the field and turned into the high road. The way to Castle Inn was all up hill, and the long road looked black and dreary in the dark night; but my lady walked on with a desperate courage, which was no common constituent in her selfish sensuous nature, but a strange faculty born out of her great despair. She did not speak again to her companion until they were close upon the glimmering lights at the top of the hill. One of these village lights, glaring redly through a crimson curtain, marked out the particular window behind which it was likely that Charlie Milverton sat nodding drowsily over his liquor, and waiting for the coming of his wife. 

"He has not gone to bed, Jeannine," said my lady, eagerly. "But there is no other light burning at the inn. I suppose Mr. Holmes is in bed and asleep." 

"Yes, my lady, I suppose so." 

"You are sure he was going to stay at the Castle to night?" 

"Oh, yes, my lady. I helped the girl to get his room ready before I came away." 

The wind, boisterous everywhere, was even shriller and more pitiless in the neighborhood of that bleak hill-top upon which the Castle Inn reared its rickety walls. The cruel blasts raved wildly round that frail erection. They disported themselves with the shattered pigeon-house, the broken weathercock, the loose tiles, and unshapely chimneys; they rattled at the window-panes, and whistled in the crevices; they mocked the feeble building from foundation to roof, and battered, and banged, and tormented it in their fierce gambols, until it trembled and rocked with the force of their rough play. 

Mr. Charlie Milverton had not troubled himself to secure the door of his dwelling-house before sitting down to drink with the man who held provisional possession of his goods and chattels. Jeannine pushed open the door with her hand, and went into the house, followed by my lady. The gas was flaring in the bar, and smoking the low plastered ceiling. The door of the bar-parlor was half open, and Lady Stamford heard the brutal laughter of Mr. Milverton as she crossed the threshold of the inn. 

"I'll tell him you're here, my lady," whispered Jeannine to her late mistress. "I know he'll be tipsy. You—you won't be offended, my lady, if he should say anything rude? You know it wasn't my wish that you should come." 

"Yes, yes," answered Lady Stamford, impatiently, "I know that. What should I care for his rudeness! Let him say what he likes." 

Jeannine Milverton pushed open the parlor door, leaving my lady in the bar close behind her. 

Charlie sat with his clumsy legs stretched out upon the hearth. He held a glass of gin-and-water in one hand and the poker in the other. He had just thrust the poker into a heap of black coals, and was scattering them to make a blaze, when his wife appeared upon the threshold of the room. 

He snatched the poker from between the bars, and made a half drunken, half threatening motion with it as he saw her. 

"So you've condescended to come home at last, ma'am," he said; "I thought you was never coming no more." 

He spoke in a thick and drunken voice, and was by no means too intelligible. He was steeped to the very lips in alcohol. His eyes were dim and watery; his hands were unsteady; his voice was choked and muffled with drink. A brute, even when most sober; a brute, even on his best behavior, he was ten times more brutal in his drunkenness, when the few restraints which held his ignorant, every day brutality in check were flung aside in the indolent recklessness of intoxication. 

"I—I've been longer than I intended to be, Charlie," Jeannine answered, in her most conciliatory manner; "but I've seen my lady, and she's been very kind, and—and she'll settle this business for us." 

"She's been very kind, has she?" muttered Mr. Milverton, with a drunken laugh; "thank her for nothing. I know the vally of her kindness. She'd be oncommon kind, I dessay, if she warn't obligated to be it." 

The collector, who had fallen into a maudlin and semi-unconscious state of intoxication upon about a third of the liquor that Mr. Milverton had consumed, only stared in feeble wonderment at his host and hostess. He sat near the table. Indeed, he had hooked himself on to it with his elbows, as a safeguard against sliding under it, and he was making imbecile attempts to light his pipe at the flame of a guttering tallow candle near him. 

"My lady has promised to settle the business for us, Charlie," Jeannine repeated, without noticing Charlie's remarks. She knew her husband's dogged nature well enough by this time to know that it was worse than useless to try to stop him from doing or saying anything which his own stubborn will led him to do or say. "My lady will settle it," she said, "and she's come down here to see about it to-night," she added. 

The poker dropped from the landlord's hand, and fell clattering among the cinders on the hearth. 

"My Lady Stamford come here to-night!" he said. 

"Yes, Charlie." 

My lady appeared upon the threshold of the door as Jeannine spoke. 

"Yes, Charlie Milverton," she said, "I have come to pay this man, and to send him about his business." 

Lady Stamford said these words in a strange, semi-mechanical manner; very much as if she had learned the sentence by rote, and were repeating it without knowing what she said. 

Mr. Milverton gave a discontented growl, and set his empty glass down upon the table with an impatient gesture. 

"You might have given the money to Jeannine," he said, "as well as have brought it yourself. We don't want no fine ladies up here, pryin' and pokin' their precious noses into everythink." 

"Charlie, Charlie!" remonstrated Jeannine, "when my lady has been so kind!" 

"Oh, damn her kindness!" cried Mr. Milverton; "it ain't her kindness as we want, gal, it's her money. She won't get no snivelin' gratitude from me. Whatever she does for us she does because she is obliged; and if she wasn't obliged she wouldn't do it—" 

Heaven knows how much more Charlie Milverton might have said, had not my lady turned upon him suddenly and awed him into silence by the unearthly glitter of her beauty. Her hair had been blown away from her face, and being of a light, feathery quality, had spread itself into a tangled mass that surrounded her forehead like a yellow flame. There was another flame in her eyes—a greenish light, such as might flash from the changing-hued orbs of an angry mermaid. 

"Stop," she cried. "I didn't come up here in the dead of night to listen to your insolence. How much is this debt?" 

"Nine pound." 

Lady Stamford produced her purse—a toy of ivory, silver, and turquoise—she took from it a note and four sovereigns. She laid these upon the table. 

"Let that man give me a receipt for the money," she said, "before I go." 

It was some time before the man could be roused into sufficient consciousness for the performance of this simple duty, and it was only by dipping a pen into the ink and pushing it between his clumsy fingers, that he was at last made to comprehend that his autograph was wanted at the bottom of the receipt which had been made out by Jeannine Milverton. Lady Stamford took the document as soon as the ink was dry, and turned to leave the parlor. Jeannine followed her. 

"You mustn't go home alone, my lady," she said. "You'll let me go with you?" 

"Yes, yes; you shall go home with me." 

The two women were standing near the door of the inn as my lady said this. Jeannine stared wonderingly at her patroness. She had expected that Lady Stamford would be in a hurry to return home after settling this business which she had capriciously taken upon herself; but it was not so; my lady stood leaning against the inn door and staring into vacancy, and again Mrs. Milverton began to fear that trouble had driven her late mistress mad. 

A little Dutch clock in the bar struck two while Lady Stamford lingered in this irresolute, absent manner. She started at the sound and began to tremble violently. 

"I think I am going to faint, Jeannine," she said; "where can I get some cold water?" 

"The pump is in the wash-house, my lady; I'll run and get you a glass of cold water." 

"No, no, no," cried my lady, clutching Jeannine's arm as she was about to run away upon this errand; "I'll get it myself. I must dip my head in a basin of water if I want to save myself from fainting. In which room does Mr. Holmes sleep?" 

There was something so irrelevant in this question that Jeannine Milverton stared aghast at her mistress before she answered it. 

"It was number three that I got ready, my lady—the front room—the room next to ours," she replied, after that pause of astonishment. 

"Give me a candle," said my lady. "I'll go into your room, and get some water for my head; stay where you are, and see that that brute of a husband of yours does not follow me!" 

She snatched the candle which Jeannine had lighted from the girl's hand and ran up the rickety, winding staircase which led to the narrow corridor upon the upper floor. Five bed-rooms opened out of this low-ceilinged, close-smelling corridor; the numbers of these rooms were indicated by squat black figures painted upon the panels of the doors. Lady Stamford had driven up to Castle Inn to inspect the house when she bought the business for her servant's bridegroom, and she knew her way about the dilapidated old place; she knew where to find Jeannine's bedroom, but she stopped before the door of that other chamber which had been prepared for Mr. Sherlock Holmes. 

She stopped and looked at the number on the door. The key was in the lock, and her hand dropped upon it as if unconsciously. But presently she suddenly began to tremble again, as she had trembled a few minutes before at the striking of the clock. She stood for a few moments trembling thus, with her hand still upon the key; then a horrible expression came over her face, and she turned the key in the lock. She turned it twice, double locking the door. 

There was no sound from within; the occupant of the chamber made no sign of having heard that ominous creaking of the rusty key in the rusty lock. 

Lady Stamford hurried into the next room. She set the candle on the dressing-table, flung off her bonnet and slung it loosely across her arm; then she went to the wash-stand and filled the basin with water. She plunged her golden hair into this water, and then stood for a few moments in the center of the room looking about her, with a white, earnest face, and an eager gaze that seemed to take in every object in the poorly furnished chamber. Jeannine's bedroom was certainly very shabbily furnished; she had been compelled to select all the most decent things for those best bedrooms which were set apart for any chance traveler who might stop for a night's lodging at the Castle Inn; but Jeannine Milverton had done her best to atone for the lack of substantial furniture in her apartment by a superabundance of drapery. Crisp curtains of cheap chintz hung from the tent-bedstead; festooned drapery of the same material shrouded the narrow window shutting out the light of day, and affording a pleasant harbor for tribes of flies and predatory bands of spiders. Even the looking-glass, a miserably cheap construction which distorted every face whose owner had the hardihood to look into it, stood upon a draperied altar of starched muslin and pink glazed calico, and was adorned with frills of lace and knitted work. 

My lady smiled as she looked at the festoons and furbelows which met her eyes upon every side. She went to the dressing-table and, smoothed her wet hair before the looking-glass, and then put on her bonnet. She was obliged to place the flaming tallow candle very close to the lace furbelows about the glass; so close that the starched muslin seemed to draw the flame toward it by some power of attraction in its fragile tissue. 

Jeannine waited anxiously by the inn door for my lady's coming. She watched the minute hand of the little Dutch clock, wondering at the slowness of its progress. It was only ten minutes past two when Lady Stamford came down-stairs, with her bonnet on and her hair still wet, but without the candle. 

Jeannine was immediately anxious about this missing candle. 

"The light, my lady," she said, "you have left it up-stairs!" 

"The wind blew it out as I was leaving your room," Lady Stamford answered, quietly. "I left it there." 

"In my room, my lady?" 

"Yes." 

"And it was quite out?" 

"Yes, I tell you; why do you worry me about your candle? It is past two o'clock. Come." 

She took the girl's arm, and half led, half dragged her from the house. The convulsive pressure of her slight hand held her firmly as an iron vise could have held her. The fierce March wind banged to the door of the house, and left the two women standing outside it. The long, black road lay bleak and desolate before them, dimly visible between straight lines of leafless hedges. 

A walk of three miles' length upon a lonely country road, between the hours of two and four on a cold winter's morning, is scarcely a pleasant task. But my lady hurried along the hard, dry highway, dragging her companion with her as if she had been impelled by some horrible demoniac force which knew no abatement. With the black night above them—with the fierce wind howling around them, sweeping across a broad expanse of hidden country, blowing as if it had arisen simultaneously from every point of the compass, and making those wanderers the focus of its ferocity—the two women walked through the darkness down the hill upon which Castle Inn stood, along a mile and a half of flat road, and then up another hill, on the western side of which Stamford Court lay in that sheltered valley, which seemed to shut in the old house from all the clamor and hubbub of the everyday world. 

My lady stopped upon the summit of this hill to draw breath and to clasp her hands upon her heart, in the vain hope that she might still its cruel beating. They were now within three-quarters of a mile of the Court, and they had been walking for nearly an hour since they had left the Castle Inn. 

Lady Stamford stopped to rest, with her face still turned toward the place of her destination. Jeannine Milverton, stopping also, and very glad of a moment's pause in that hurried journey, looked back into the far darkness beneath which lay that dreary shelter that had given her so much uneasiness. And she did so, she uttered a shrill cry of horror, and clutched wildly at her companion's cloak. 

The night sky was no longer all dark. The thick blackness was broken by one patch of lurid light. 

"My lady, my lady!" cried Jeannine, pointing to this lurid patch; "do you see?" 

"Yes, child, I see," answered Lady Stamford, trying to shake the clinging hands from her garments. "What's the matter?" 

"It's a fire—a fire, my lady!" 

"Yes, I am afraid it is a fire. At Brentwood, most likely. Let me go, Jeannine; it's nothing to us." 

"Yes, yes, my lady; it's nearer than Brentwood—much nearer; it's at the Castle Inn." 

Lady Stamford did not answer. She was trembling again, with the cold perhaps, for the wind had torn her heavy cloak from her shoulders, and had left her slender figure exposed to the blast. 

"It's at the Castle Inn, my lady!" cried Jeannine Milverton. "It's the Inn that's on fire—I know it is, I know it is! I thought of fire to-night, and I was fidgety and uneasy, for I knew this would happen someday. I wouldn't mind if it was only the wretched place, but there'll be life lost, there'll be life lost!" sobbed the girl, distractedly. "There's Charlie, too tipsy to help himself, unless others help him; there's Mr. Holmes asleep—" 

Jeannine Milverton stopped suddenly at the mention of Sherlock's name, and fell upon her knees, clasping her uplifted hands, and appealing wildly to Lady Stamford. 

"Oh, my God!" she cried. "Say it's not true, my lady, say it's not true! It's too horrible, it's too horrible, it's too horrible!" 

"What's too horrible?" 

"The thought that's in my mind; the terrible thought that's in my mind." 

"What do you mean, girl?" cried my lady, fiercely. 

"Oh, God forgive me if I'm wrong!" the kneeling woman gasped in detached sentences, "and God grant I may be. Why did you go up to the Castle, my lady? Why were you so set on going against all I could say—you who are so bitter against Mr. Holmes and against Charlie, and who knew they were both under that roof? Oh, tell me that I do you a cruel wrong, my lady; tell me so—tell me! For as there is a Heaven above me I think that you went to that place to-night on purpose to set fire to it. Tell me that I'm wrong, my lady; tell me that I'm doing you a wicked wrong." 

"I will tell you nothing, except that you are a mad woman," answered Lady Stamford; in a cold, hard voice. "Get up; fool, idiot, coward! Is your husband such a precious bargain that you should be groveling there, lamenting and groaning for him? What is Sherlock Holmes to you, that you behave like a maniac, because you think he is in danger? How do you know the fire is at the Inn? You see a red patch in the sky, and you cry out directly that your own paltry hovel is in flames, as if there were no place in the world that could burn except that. The fire may be at Brentwood, or further away—at Romford, or still further away, on the eastern side of London, perhaps. Get up, mad woman, and go back and look after your goods and chattels, and your husband and your lodger. Get up and go: I don't want you." 

"Oh! my lady, my lady, forgive me," sobbed Jeannine; "there's nothing you can say to me that's hard enough for having done you such a wrong, even in my thoughts. I don't mind your cruel words—I don't mind anything if I'm wrong." 

"Go back and see for yourself," answered Lady Stamford, sternly. "I tell you again, I don't want you." 

She walked away in the darkness, leaving Jeannine Milverton still kneeling upon the hard road, where she had cast herself in that agony of supplication. Sir Michael's wife walked toward the house in which her husband slept with the red blaze lighting up the skies behind her, and with nothing but the blackness of the night before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Sunday Summer Serial: thanks to redscudery for the brilliant idea!
> 
> Thursday Teasers posted on my Tumblr (http://doctornerdington.tumblr.com).
> 
> Comments so very much appreciated -- thank you, to those of you who have left feedback so far!
> 
> Next week, a special DOUBLE chapter: "My Lady Tells the Truth" parts A and B.


	12. My Lady Tells the Truth (Part A)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Special double chapter this week! Part B is coming right up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a posthumous collaboration with Mary Elizabeth Braddon; I've adapted her novel Lady Audley's Secret, and retained much of her original structure and language. ALL CREDIT TO HER.
> 
> Braddon's novel was originally published serially, as this adaptation is. Chapter updates every Sunday throughout the summer!

It was very late the next morning when Lady Stamford emerged from her dressing-room, exquisitely dressed in a morning costume of delicate muslin, laces, and embroideries; but with a very pale face, and with half-circles of purple shadow under her eyes. She accounted for this pale face and these hollow eyes by declaring that she had sat up sewing until a very late hour on the previous night. 

Sir Michael and his young wife breakfasted in the library at a comfortable round table, wheeled close to the blazing fire; and Molly was compelled to share this meal with her step-mother, however she might avoid that lady in the long interval between breakfast and dinner. 

The March morning was bleak and dull, and a drizzling rain fell incessantly, obscuring the landscape and blotting out the distance. There were very few letters by the morning post; the daily newspapers did not arrive until noon; and such aids to conversation being missing, there was very little talk at the breakfast table. 

Molly looked out at the drizzling rain drifting against the broad window-panes. 

"No riding to-day," she said; "and no chance of any callers to enliven us, unless that ridiculous Sherlock comes crawling through the wet from the Castle Inn." 

Have you ever heard anybody, whom you knew to be dead, alluded to in a light, easy going manner by another person who did not know of his death—alluded to as doing that or this, as performing some trivial everyday operation—when you know that he has vanished away from the face of this earth, and separated himself forever from all living creatures and their commonplace pursuits in the awful solemnity of death? Such a chance allusion, insignificant though it may be, is apt to send a strange thrill of pain through the mind. The ignorant remark jars discordantly upon the hyper-sensitive brain; the King of Terrors is desecrated by that unwitting disrespect. Heaven knows what hidden reason my lady may have had for experiencing some such revulsion of feeling on the sudden mention of Mr. Holmes's name, but her pale face blanched to a sickly white as Molly Stamford spoke of him. 

"What do you think Major Melville told me when he called here yesterday, Molly?" Sir Michael asked, after a brief lull. 

"I haven't the remotest idea," replied Molly, rather disdainfully. 

“He told me that a very devoted admirer of you, a certain Sir Gregory Lestrade, has forsaken his place in Hertfordshire, and his hunting stable, and has come to Essex to look at some new breeding stock." 

Miss Stamford flushed up suddenly at the mention of her old adorer, but recovered herself very quickly. 

"Has he?" she said indifferently. "He did not mention it in his recent letter. He is a gentleman, father, through and through – twenty times better than that peripatetic, patent refrigerator, Mr. Sherlock Holmes." 

"I wish, Molly, you were not so fond of ridiculing Sherlock," Sir Michael said, gravely. "He is a good fellow, and I'm as fond of him as if he'd been my own son; and—and—I've been very uncomfortable about him lately. He has changed very much within the last few days, and he has taken all sorts of absurd ideas into his head, and my lady has alarmed me about him. She thinks—" 

Lady Stamford interrupted her husband with a grave shake of her head. 

"It is better not to say too much about it as yet awhile," she said; "Molly knows what I think." 

"Yes," replied Miss Stamford, "my lady thinks that Sherlock is going mad, but I know better than that. He's not at all the sort of person to go mad. He may move about for the rest of his life, perhaps, in a tranquil state idiotic brilliance, imperfectly comprehending who he is, and where he's going, and what he's doing—but he'll never go mad." 

Sir Michael did not reply to this. He had been very much disturbed by his conversation with my lady on the previous evening, and had silently debated the painful question in his mind ever since. 

His wife—the woman he best loved and most believed in—had told him, with all appearance of regret and agitation, her conviction of Sherlock's insanity. He tried in vain to arrive at the conclusion he wished most ardently to attain; he tried in vain to think that my lady was misled by her own fancies, and had no foundation for what she said. But then, again, it suddenly flashed upon him, that to think this was to arrive at a worse conclusion; it was to transfer the horrible suspicion from Sherlock to his wife. She appeared to be possessed with an actual conviction of Sherlock's insanity. To imagine her wrong was to imagine some weakness in her own mind. The longer he thought of the subject the more it harassed and perplexed him. It was most certain that the young man had always been eccentric. He was sensible, he was clever, he was honorable and gentlemanlike in feeling, though perhaps a little careless in the performance of certain minor social duties; but there were some slight differences, not easily to be defined, that separated him from other men of his age and position. Then, again, it was equally true that he had very much changed within the period that had succeeded the disappearance of John Watson. He had grown moody and thoughtful, melancholy and absent-minded. He had held himself aloof from society, had sat for hours without speaking; had talked at other points by fits and starts; and had excited himself unusually in the discussion of subjects which apparently lay far out of the region of his own life and interests. Then there was even another region which seemed to strengthen my lady's case against this unhappy young man. He had been brought up in the frequent society of Molly—pretty and genial—to whom interest, and one would have thought affection, naturally pointed as his most fitting bride. More than this, the girl had shown him, in the innocent guilelessness of a transparent nature, that on her side at least, affection was not wanting; and yet, in spite of all this, he had held himself aloof, and had allowed others to propose for her hand, and to be rejected by her, and had still made no sign. 

Now love is so very subtle an essence, such an indefinable metaphysical marvel, that its due force, though very cruelly felt by the sufferer himself, is never clearly understood by those who look on at its torments and wonder why he takes the common fever so badly. Sir Michael believed that because Molly was a pretty girl and an amiable girl it was therefore extraordinary and unnatural in Sherlock Holmes not to have duly fallen in love with her. He forgot that love, which is a madness, and a scourge, and a fever, and a delusion, and a snare, is also a mystery, and very imperfectly understood by everyone except the individual sufferer who writhes under its tortures. He looked at Sherlock as exemplary of a very large class of young men, and his daughter as exemplary of an equally extensive class of the feminine, and could not see why the two samples should not make a very respectable match. He ignored all those infinitesimal differences in nature which make the wholesome food of one man the deadly poison of another. 

Sir Michael sat by the library fire after breakfast upon this wretched rainy morning, writing letters and reading the newspapers. Molly shut herself in her own apartment to scribble out a lengthy rebuke to Sir Gregory for not informing her of his presence in Essex. Lady Stamford locked the door of her dressing room, and paced up and down all through that weary morning. 

She had locked the door to guard against the chance of any one coming in suddenly and observing her before she was aware—before she had had sufficient warning to enable her to face their scrutiny. Her pale face seemed to grow paler as the morning advanced. A tiny medicine-chest was open upon the dressing-table, and little stoppered bottles of red lavender, sal-volatile, chloroform, chlorodyne, and ether were scattered about. Once my lady paused before this medicine-chest, and took out the remaining bottles, half-absently, perhaps, until she came to one which was filled with a thick, dark liquid, and labeled "opium—poison." 

She trifled a long time with this last bottle; holding it up to the light, and even removing the stopper and smelling the sickly liquid. But she put it from her suddenly with a shudder. "If I could!" she muttered, "if I could only do it! And yet why should I now?" 

She clinched her small hands as she uttered the last words, and walked to the window of the dressing-room, which looked straight toward that ivied archway under which any one must come who came from the Castle Inn to the Court. 

There were smaller gates in the gardens which led into the meadows behind the Court, but there was no other way of coming from the Inn or Brentwood than by the principal entrance. 

The solitary hand of the clock over the archway was midway between one and two when my lady looked at it. 

"How slow the time is," she said, wearily; "how slow, how slow! Shall I grow old like this, I wonder, with every minute of my life seeming like an hour?" 

She stood for a few minutes watching the archway, but no one passed under it while she looked, and she turned impatiently away from the window to resume her weary wandering about the rooms. 

Whatever fire that had been which had reflected itself vividly in the black sky, no tidings of it had as yet come to Stamford Court. The day was miserably wet and windy, altogether the very last day upon which even the most confirmed idler and gossip would care to venture out. It was not a market-day, and there were therefore very few passengers upon the road between Brentwood and Chelmsford, so that as yet no news of the fire, which had occurred in the dead of the wintry night, had reached the village of Stamford, or traveled from the village to the Court. 

The maid with the rose-colored ribbons came to the door of the anteroom to summon her mistress to luncheon, but Lady Stamford only opened the door a little way, and intimated her intention of taking no luncheon. 

"My head aches terribly, Martin," she said; "I shall go and lie down till dinner-time. You may come at five to dress me." 

Lady Stamford said this with the predetermination of dressing at four, and thus dispensing with the services of her attendant. Among all privileged spies, a lady's-maid has the highest privileges. She has a hundred methods for the finding out of her mistress' secrets. She knows by the manner in which her victim jerks her head from under the hair-brush, or chafes at the gentlest administration of the comb, what hidden tortures are racking her breast—what secret perplexities are bewildering her brain. That well-bred attendant knows how to interpret the most obscure diagnosis of all mental diseases that can afflict her mistress; she knows when the ivory complexion is bought and paid for—when the pearly teeth are foreign substances fashioned by the dentist—when the glossy plaits are the relics of the dead, rather than the property of the living; and she knows other and more sacred secrets than these. Lady Stamford had made no confidante of her new maid, and on this day of all others she wished to be alone. 

She did lie down; she cast herself wearily upon the luxurious sofa in the dressing-room, and buried her face in the down pillows and tried to sleep. Sleep!—she had almost forgotten what it was, that tender restorer of tired nature, it seemed so long now since she had slept. It was only about eight-and-forty hours perhaps, but it appeared an intolerable time. Her fatigue of the night before, and her unnatural excitement, had worn her out at last. She did fall asleep; she fell into a heavy slumber that was almost like stupor. She had taken a few drops out of the opium bottle in a glass of water before lying down. 

The clock over the mantelpiece chimed the quarter before four as she woke suddenly and started up, with the cold perspiration breaking out in icy drops upon her forehead. She had dreamt that every member of the household was clamoring at the door, eager to tell her of a dreadful fire that had happened in the night. 

There was no sound but the flapping of the ivy-leaves against the glass, the occasional falling of a cinder, and the steady ticking of the clock. 

"Perhaps I shall be always dreaming these sort of dreams," my lady thought, "until the terror of them kills me!" 

The rain had ceased, and the cold spring sunshine was glittering upon the windows. Lady Stamford dressed herself rapidly but carefully. I do not say that even in her supremest hour of misery she still retained her pride in her beauty. But nay, was not pride; she looked upon that beauty as a weapon, and she felt that she had now double need to be well armed. She dressed herself in her most gorgeous silk, a voluminous robe of silvery, shimmering blue, that made her look as if she had been arrayed in moonbeams. She shook out her hair into feathery showers of glittering gold, and, with a cloak of white cashmere about her shoulders, went down-stairs into the vestibule. 

She opened the door of the library and looked in. Sir Michael Stamford was asleep in his easy-chair. As my lady softly closed this door Molly descended the stairs from her own room. The turret door was open, and the sun was shining upon the wet grass-plat in the quadrangle. The firm gravel-walks were already very nearly dry, for the rain had ceased for upward of two hours. 

"Will you take a walk with me in the quadrangle?" Lady Stamford asked as her step-daughter approached. The armed neutrality between the two women admitted of any chance civility such as this. 

"Yes, if you please, my lady," Molly answered, rather listlessly. "I have been yawning over a stupid novel all the morning,” she lied, “and shall be very glad of a little fresh air." 

Lady Stamford led the way through the low doorway and on to the smooth gravel drive, by which carriages approached the house. She was still very pale, but the brightness of her dress and of her feathery golden ringlets, distracted an observer's eyes from her pallid face. Mental distress is, with some show of reason, associated in our minds with loose, disordered garments and dishabilled hair, and an appearance in every way the reverse of my lady's. Why had she come out into the chill sunshine of that March afternoon to wander up and down that monotonous pathway with the step-daughter she hated? She came because she was under the dominion of a horrible restlessness, which, would not suffer her to remain within the house waiting for certain tidings which she knew must too surely come. At first she had wished to ward them off—at first she had wished that strange convulsions of nature might arise to hinder their coming—that abnormal winter lightnings might wither and destroy the messenger who carried them—that the ground might tremble and yawn beneath his hastening feet, and that impassable gulfs might separate the spot from which the tidings were to come and the place to which they were to be carried. She wished that the earth might stand still, and the paralyzed elements cease from their natural functions, that the progress of time might stop, that the Day of Judgment might come, and that she might thus be brought before an unearthly tribunal, and so escape the intervening shame and misery of any earthly judgment. In the wild chaos of her brain, every one of these thoughts had held its place, and in her short slumber on the sofa in her dressing-room she had dreamed all these things and a hundred other things, all bearing upon the same subject. Going down into the quiet house with the memory of these dreams strong upon her, she had been bewildered by the stillness which had betokened that the tidings had not yet come. 

And now her mind underwent a complete change. She no longer wished to delay the dreaded intelligence. She wished the agony, whatever it was to be, over and done with, the pain suffered, and the release attained. It seemed to her as if the intolerable day would never come to an end, as if her mad wishes had been granted, and the progress of time had actually stopped. 

"What a long day it has been!" exclaimed Molly, as if taking up the burden of my lady's thoughts; "nothing but drizzle and mist and wind! And now that it's too late for anybody to go out, it must needs be fine," the young lady added, with an evident sense of injury. 

Lady Stamford did not answer. She was looking at the stupid one-handed clock, and waiting for the news which must come sooner or later, which could not surely fail to come very speedily. 

"They have been afraid to come and tell him," she thought; "they have been afraid to break the news to Sir Michael. Who will come to tell it, at last, I wonder? The rector of Stamford, perhaps, or the doctor; some important person at least." 

If she could have gone out into the leafless avenues, or onto the high road beyond them; if she could have gone so far as that hill upon which she had so lately parted with Jeannine, she would have gladly done so. She would rather have suffered anything than that slow suspense, that corroding anxiety, that metaphysical dryrot in which heart and mind seemed to decay under an insufferable torture. She tried to talk, and by a painful effort contrived now and then to utter some commonplace remark. Under any ordinary circumstances her companion would have noticed her embarrassment, but Miss Stamford, happening to be very much absorbed by her own thoughts, was quite as well inclined to be silent as my lady herself. The monotonous walk up and down the graveled pathway suited Molly's humor. 

"Good gracious me!" she cried, suddenly—"six o'clock, and I'm not dressed." The half-hour bell rung in a cupola upon the roof while Molly was speaking. "I must go in, my lady," she said. "Won't you come?" 

"Presently," answered Lady Stamford. "I'm dressed, you see." 

Molly ran off, but Sir Michael's wife still lingered in the quadrangle, still waited for those tidings which were so long coming. 

It was nearly dark. The blue mists of evening had slowly risen from the ground. The flat meadows were filled with a gray vapor, and a stranger might have fancied Stamford Court a castle on the margin of a sea. Under the archway the shadows of fastcoming night lurked darkly, like traitors waiting for an opportunity to glide stealthily into the quadrangle. Through the archway a patch of cold blue sky glimmered faintly, streaked by one line of lurid crimson, and lighted by the dim glitter of one wintry-looking star. Not a creature was stirring in the quadrangle but the restless woman who paced up and down the straight pathways, listening for a footstep whose coming was to strike terror to her soul. She heard it at last!—a footstep in the avenue upon the other side of the archway. But was it the footstep? Her sense of hearing, made unnaturally acute by excitement, told her that it was a man's footstep—told even more, that it was the tread of a gentleman, no slouching, lumbering pedestrian in hobnailed boots, but a gentleman who walked firmly and well. 

Every sound fell like a lump of ice upon my lady's heart. She could not wait, she could not contain herself, she lost all self-control, all power of endurance, all capability of self-restraint, and she rushed toward the archway. 

She paused beneath its shadow, for the stranger was close upon her. She saw him, oh, God! she saw him in that dim evening light. Her brain reeled, her heart stopped beating. She uttered no cry of surprise, no exclamation of terror, but staggered backward and clung for support to the ivied buttress of the archway. With her slender figure crouched into the angle formed by the buttress and the wall which it supported, she stood staring at the new-comer. 

As he approached her more closely her knees sunk under her, and she dropped to the ground, not fainting, or in any manner unconscious, but sinking into a crouching attitude, and still crushed into the angle of the wall, as if she would have made a tomb for herself in the shadow of that sheltering brickwork. 

"My lady!" 

The speaker was Sherlock Holmes. He whose bedroom door she had double-locked seventeen hours before at the Castle Inn. 

"What is the matter with you?" he said, in a strange, constrained manner. "Get up, and let me take you indoors." 

He assisted her to rise, and she obeyed him very submissively. He took her arm in his strong hand and led her across the quadrangle and into the lamp-lit hall. She shivered more violently than he had ever seen any woman shiver before, but she made no attempt at resistance to his will. 

* * * * *

"Is there any room in which I can talk to you alone?" Sherlock Holmes asked, as he looked dubiously round the hall. 

My lady only bowed her head in answer. She pushed open the door of the library, which had been left ajar. Sir Michael had gone to his dressing-room to prepare for dinner after a day of lazy enjoyment, perfectly legitimate for an invalid. The apartment was quite empty, only lighted by the blaze of the fire. 

Lady Stamford entered the room, followed by Sherlock, who closed the door behind him. The wretched, shivering woman went to the fireplace and knelt down before the blaze, as if any natural warmth, could have power to check that unnatural chill. The young man followed her, and stood beside her upon the hearth, with his arm resting upon the chimney-piece. 

"Lady Stamford," he said, in a voice whose icy sternness held out no hope of any tenderness or compassion, "I spoke to you last-night very plainly, but you refused to listen to me. To-night I must speak to you still more plainly, and you must no longer refuse to listen to me." 

My lady, crouching before the fire with her face hidden in her hands, uttered a low, sobbing sound which was almost a moan, but made no other answer. 

"There was a fire last night at the Castle Inn, Lady Stamford," the pitiless voice proceeded; "the Castle Inn, the house in which I slept, was burned to the ground. Do you know how I escaped perishing in that destruction?" 

"No." 

"I escaped by a most providential circumstance which seems a very simple one. I did not sleep in the room which had been prepared for me. The place seemed wretchedly damp and chilly, the chimney smoked abominably when an attempt was made at lighting a fire, and I persuaded the servant to make me up a bed on the sofa in the small ground-floor sitting-room which I had occupied during the evening." 

He paused for a moment, watching the crouching figure. The only change in my lady's attitude was that her head had fallen a little lower. 

"Shall I tell you by whose agency the destruction of the Castle Inn was brought about, my lady?" 

There was no answer. 

"Shall I tell you?" 

Still the same obstinate silence. 

"My Lady Stamford," cried Sherlock, suddenly, "you are the incendiary. It was you whose murderous hand kindled those flames. It was you who thought of that thrice-horrible deed to rid yourself of me, your enemy and denouncer. What was it to you that other lives might be sacrificed? The day is past for tenderness and mercy. For you I can no longer know pity or compunction. So far as by sparing your shame I can spare others who must suffer by your shame, I will be merciful, but no further. If there were any secret tribunal before which you might be made to answer for your crimes, I would have little scruple in being your accuser, but I would spare that generous and high-born gentleman upon whose noble name your infamy would be reflected." 

His voice softened as he made this allusion, and for a moment he broke down, but he recovered himself by an effort and continued: 

"No life was lost in the fire of last night. I slept lightly, my lady, for my mind was troubled, as it has been for a long time, by the misery which I knew was lowering upon this house. It was I who discovered the breaking out of the fire in time to give the alarm and to save the servant girl and the poor drunken Milverton, who was very much burnt in spite of efforts, and who now lies in a precarious state at his mother's cottage. It was from him and from his wife that I learned who had visited the Castle Inn in the dead of the night. The woman was almost distracted when she saw me, and from her I discovered the particulars of last night. Heaven knows what other secrets of yours she may hold, my lady, or how easily they might be extorted from her if I wanted her aid, which I do not. My path lies very straight before me. I have sworn to bring the murderer of John Watson to justice, and I will keep my oath. I say that it was by your agency my friend met with his death. If I have wondered sometimes, as it was only natural I should, whether I was not the victim of some horrible hallucination, whether such an alternative was not more probable than that a young and lovely woman should be capable of so foul and treacherous a murder, all wonder is past. After last night's deed of horror, there is no crime you could commit, however vast and unnatural, which could make me wonder. Henceforth you must seem to me no longer a woman, a guilty woman with a heart which in its worst wickedness has yet some latent power to suffer and feel; I look upon you henceforth as the hellish incarnation of some evil principle. But you shall no longer pollute this place by your presence. Unless you will confess what you are and who you are in the presence of the man you have deceived so long, and accept from him and from me such mercy as we may be inclined to extend to you, I will gather together the witnesses who shall swear to your identity, and at peril of any shame to myself and those I care for, I will bring upon you the just and awful punishment of your crime." 

The woman rose suddenly and stood before him erect and resolute, with her hair dashed away from her face and her eyes glittering. 

"Bring Sir Michael!" she cried; "bring him here, and I will confess anything—everything. What do I care? God knows I have struggled hard enough against you, and fought the battle patiently enough; but you have conquered, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. It is a great triumph, is it not—a wonderful victory? You have used your cool, calculating, frigid, luminous intellect to a noble purpose. You have conquered—a mad woman!" 

"A mad woman!" cried Mr. Holmes in confusion. 

"Yes, a mad woman. When you say that I killed John Watson, you say the truth. When you say that I murdered him treacherously and foully, you lie. I killed him because my intellect is a little way upon the wrong side of that narrow boundary-line between sanity and insanity; because, when John Watson goaded me, as you have goaded me, and reproached me, and threatened me, my mind, never properly balanced, utterly lost its balance, and I was mad! Bring Sir Michael; and bring him quickly. If he is to be told one thing let him be told everything; let him hear the secret of my life!" 

Sherlock Holmes left the room to look for the man with God knows how heavy a weight of anguish at his heart, for he knew he was about to shatter the happy dream of Sir Michael’s life; and he knew that our dreams are none the less terrible to lose, because they have never been the realities for which we have mistaken them. But even in the midst of his sorrow for Sir Michael, he could not help wondering at my lady's last words—"the secret of my life." He remembered those lines in the letter written by Maria Watson upon the eve of her flight from Wildernsea, which had so puzzled him. He remembered those appealing sentences—"You should forgive me, for you know why I have been so. You know the secret of my life." 

He met Sir Michael in the hall. He made no attempt to prepare the way for the terrible revelation which the baronet was to hear. He only drew him into the fire-lit library, and there for the first time addressed him quietly thus: "Lady Stamford has a confession to make to you, sir—a confession which I know will be a most cruel surprise, a most bitter grief. But it is necessary for your present honor, and for your future peace, that you should hear it. She has deceived you, I regret to say, most basely; but it is only right that you should hear from her own lips any excuses which she may have to offer for her wickedness. May God soften this blow for you!" choked the young man, suddenly breaking down; "I cannot; for I am also injured." 

Sir Michael lifted his hand as if he would command Sherlock to be silent, but that imperious hand dropped feeble and impotent at his side. He stood in the center of the fire-lit room rigid and immovable. 

"Mary!" he cried, in a voice whose anguish struck like a blow upon the jarred nerves of those who heard it, as the cry of a wounded animal pains the listener—"Mary, tell me that this man is a madman! Tell me so, my love, or I shall kill him!" 

There was a sudden fury in his voice as he turned upon Sherlock, as if he could indeed have felled his wife's accuser to the earth with the strength of his uplifted arm. 

But my lady fell upon her knees at his feet, interposing herself between the baronet and his target, who stood leaning on the back of an easy-chair, with his face hidden by his hand. 

"He has told you the truth," said my lady, "and he is not mad! I have sent him for you that I may confess everything to you, and avoid a public trial. I should be sorry for you if I could, for you have been very, very good to me, much better to me than I ever deserved; but I can't, I can't—I can feel nothing but my own misery. I told you long ago that I was selfish; I am selfish still—more selfish than ever in my misery. Happy, prosperous people may feel for others. I laugh at other people's sufferings; they seem so small compared to my own." 

When first my lady had fallen on her knees, Sir Michael had attempted to raise her, and had remonstrated with her; but as she spoke he dropped into a chair close to the spot upon which she knelt, and with his hands clasped together, and with his head bent to catch every syllable of those horrible words, he listened as if his whole being had been resolved into that one sense of hearing. 

"I must tell you the story of my life, in order to tell you why I have become the miserable wretch who has no better hope than to be allowed to run away and hide in some desolate corner of the earth. I must tell you the story of my life," repeated my lady, "but you need not fear that I shall dwell long upon it. It has not been so pleasant to me that I should wish to remember it. 

“I never knew my mother, for she died birthing me. My father was in the navy, and not suited to the raising of a young girl, so he requested the assistance of a distant and elderly relation of my mother’s, who agreed to take charge of me. 

“I was not happy, for she was a disagreeable woman and we lived in a lonely place, a village upon the Hampshire coast about seven miles from Portsmouth. My father returned home only occasionally to see me; and I was left almost entirely to the charge of this woman, who vented her rage upon me whenever she was annoyed by any little thing. I never knew the affection of a parent.

“When I was six years old, it was decided that I should be sent away to school. It does not matter which school it was; let me only say that due to some fancy of my father’s, it was one of the better-known institutions open to a girl of my class and income. I was happy there – truly happy for the first time in my life, for it was there that I discovered the life of the mind. I had always been a bright young thing, but at school I was taught to read, I was taught the grand history of human endeavour, of scientific and mathematical advances, of the great works of the great minds of our species. I excelled in the subjects considered suitable to my sex, and gained enough skill at painting, drawing, dancing, and the pianoforte that I could function adequately as a lady in society – but my heart lay in more serious studies. Privately, I began to teach myself Latin, so that I might read the great classics without a clumsy translator obscuring my understanding. My tutors grew tired of my constant questioning, and punished me with work that would tax the knowledge and patience of a senior scholar – but I reveled in it; I consumed all I could.

“I had ambition, you see, and my ambition was simply this: to know all. I was a foolish, stupid girl, but my mind is ever turning, ever seeking, relentlessly moving, and my studies were the first and only thing to focus this exhausting drive into something productive and good. I was voracious.” Here my lady stopped, and smiled bitterly. 

"My father was not what the world generally calls a good man. In the years succeeding my mother’s death, had he slipped into dissipation and drink. By the time I was twelve years old, he was forced to leave his position in the navy and retire upon his half-pay. He could no longer afford my school fees, and my old aunt had died. I went to live at the other extremity of England with a father I barely knew, who had established himself at Wildernsea, with the idea that the place was cheap and select. Now, for the first time, I felt the bitterness of poverty.” 

My lady paused for a moment, but only to take breath, for she had spoken rapidly, as if eager to tell this hated story, and to have done with it. She was still on her knees, but Sir Michael made no effort to raise her. 

He sat silent and immovable. What was this story that he was listening to? Whose was it, and to what was it to lead? It could not be his wife's; he had heard her simple account of her youth, and had believed it as he had believed in the Gospel. She had told him a very brief story of an early orphanage, and a long, quiet, colorless youth. He had never known her to take an interest in anything aside from his own comfort and the social demands of their circle; she barely ever even glanced at Molly’s silly novels. He could not fathom what he was hearing, so out of character did it seem. 

“There ends the happy part of my story, and the happy portion of my life. My father’s home in Wildernsea was a tiny cottage, and I realized when I arrived that I was expected to be housekeeper, maid, and cook, for my father’s reduced income would not extend to a household staff, and he was largely incapacitated by drink. I could have endured this, though, had my inner life been allowed to flourish. But my father had no patience for my delusions, and no tolerance for my girlish fancies. He had not before been willfully cruel, but drink and poverty made him so. He sold the few books I had managed to bring with me from school, and strove to beat my interests from my head, calling them ‘unnatural’ in a member of my sex. He was a constant terror to me, for I never knew when his fists might fly. I could not read, I could not write or study, nor could I speak with any fellow creature who shared my interests. This was a torture akin to being buried alive. A mind such as mine, left to stagnate, turns in upon itself. It is all-devouring.” 

At this, Holmes started, and looked quickly and searchingly at her face. A pang of terrible recognition ran through him. 

“I believe this is what sowed the seeds of my madness. I began to grow askew, as one sometimes sees happen with trees which grow straight and true until they reach a certain height, and then degenerate into disordered and deadly crookedness. In that tiny cottage with my father, I had nothing with which to occupy myself save the most menial of household tasks. My brain began to churn and spin in useless circles; I mourned for my old life, and dreaded what was to come. In vain, I sought an escape. 

"The years passed, and as I grew older I was told that I was pretty—beautiful—lovely—bewitching. I heard all these things at first indifferently, for what did I care about appearances, when my life was such a stultifying misery? But the years were hard, and long, and painful; they taught the vital truths I had not learned at school. By-and-by I learned that my ultimate fate in life depended upon my beauty, upon the men I could influence with it. I concluded that my own best self must be repressed if I was to escape my father’s torment, for intellect and ambition had done nothing for me. My only escape would be as a wife. And so, I began to transform myself, to make myself desirable and marriageable. I must be clever enough to entertain a suitor, but never more clever than he; I must have some learning, but only in the feminine arts. I must be submissive. I must be charming. Above all, I must be beautiful, for beauty is woman’s ultimate currency. With all the force of my being, I jettisoned those parts of myself that I loved best; I made myself into a woman a man could love, and strove to eradicate my useless interests and passions from my brain entirely. To escape a life I despised, I became what I despised: a vain and stupid maid.

“And at last the suitor, the wandering prince came." 

She paused for a moment, and shuddered convulsively. It was impossible to see any of the changes in her countenance, for her face was obstinately bent toward the floor. Throughout her long confession she never lifted it; throughout her long confession her voice was never broken by a tear. What she had to tell she told in a cold, hard tone, very much the tone in which some criminal, dogged and sullen to the last, might have confessed to a jail chaplain. 

"The wandering prince came," she repeated; "he was called John Watson." 

For the first time since his wife's confession had begun, Sir Michael Stamford started. He began to understand it all now. A crowd of unheeded words and forgotten circumstances that had seemed too insignificant for remark or recollection, flashed back upon him as vividly as if they had been the leading incidents of his past life. 

"John Watson fell in love with me and married me three months after my seventeenth birthday. I think I loved him as much as it was in my power to love anybody, which perhaps does not say a great deal; not more than I have loved you, Sir Michael—not so much, for when you married me you elevated me to a position that he could never have given me. He was not rich, but he was kind, and he promised to take me away from my father. I think my father’s cruelty only increased his ardor, and I used this to my advantage, as well.

“He loved me for my beauty, for my charm, even for my vulnerability; he did not love me for myself, for I was no longer myself. I revealed nothing of my inner world to him.” 

Here, Sherlock raised his head. “In that, you did him a great injustice, my lady,” he said, and his eyes were full of sorrow. Lady Stamford bowed her head. 

As for Sir Michael, he could not speak. His dream was broken. He remembered that summer's evening, nearly two years ago, when he had first declared his love for Mr. Dawson's governess; he remembered the sick, half-shuddering sensation of regret and disappointment that had come over him then, and he felt as if it had in some manner dimly foreshadowed the agony of to-night. He had loved her and admired her; he had been bewitched by her beauty and bewildered by her charms; but that sense of something wanting, that vague feeling of loss and disappointment which had come upon him on the summer's night of his betrothal had been with him more or less distinctly ever since. There is beneath the voluntary confidence an involuntary distrust, not to be conquered by any effort of the will. 

"We were married," my lady continued, "and we were happy, for a time. We settled a tiny cottage in London, and for all that it was no bigger than the cottage I had shared with my father, yet it was far pleasanter, for John was a good husband, and never raised hand or voice to me. But we were neither of us people who could be resigned to our poor lives, and John grew more gloomy and wretched the longer our life went on there. He was always thinking of his disappointments and troubles, and began to neglect me. He had violent nightmares, and would be silent for hours after waking. I was very unhappy, and it seemed as if this fine marriage had only given me a twelvemonth's relief after all. I begged John to appeal to his father for whatever small assistance his family could offer, but he refused. The employment he could find was not well-paid, and he failed in finding better work. My baby was born, and the crisis which had been fatal to my mother arose for me. I escaped her fate, but I was more irritable perhaps after my recovery, less inclined to fight the hard battle of the world. Every effort seemed fruitless, and I passed my days under a dark cloud of melancholy interspersed with brief fits of anxious restlessness. One day, I felt I would fly at John with teeth and nails, or run into the street if I did give vent to my thoughts, and so I snapped. I upbraided him for his cruelty in having allied a helpless girl to endless misery. I called him dreadful names, and told him that I hated him, that he was no better than my father. He blanched at that, so that I almost thought he would faint; but without another word, he left the house. When I awoke the next morning, I found a letter lying on the table by my bed, telling me that he was going to India to seek our fortune, and that he would never see me again until he was worthy of us. 

"I looked upon this as a desertion, and I resented it bitterly—resented it by hating the man who had left me with a young child and no protector. I had to double my own work, which was the soul-destroying drudgery of piecework, and an occasional lesson in music or French, when I could find a student willing to pay. In every hour of labor I recognized a separate wrong done me by John Watson. His father was no longer rich, but respectable, and I, his wife, and the mother of his child, was a slave allied to beggary and obscurity. People pitied me, and I hated them for their pity. I did not love the child, for she was a burden upon my hands. I became subject to fits of violence and despair. At this time I think my mind first lost its balance, and for the first time I crossed that invisible line which separates reason from madness. I have seen my child's eyes fixed upon me in horror and alarm. I have known strangers to soothe me as only mad people and children are soothed, and I have chafed against their petty devices. I have resented even charity.

“That winter, my girl fell ill with scarlet fever. I could barely afford coal to heat our rooms, and she did not rally. I did my best for her; I beg you to believe that I did my best, even in my sorry state. But the fever reached a crisis point from which she could not recover, and she died. All I could feel for her, even then, was relief. This world is not a kind or gentle place for our sex, and she, at least, had found the peace that escaped me. I planned to bury her in Portsmouth, the most tranquil place of which I could conceive, and I used the bulk of my meager funds to that end. 

"It was then, as I made arrangements for her burial, that my wild mind resolved itself into a desperate purpose. I determined to run away from my wretched home, and from my very life – so filled with misery, abandonment, illness and death. I wanted no part of anything from my past, and resolved to start my life over, reborn a new woman. 

"However, I knew the energy of John's character. I knew that the man who had gone abroad to win a fortune for his wife would leave no stone unturned in his efforts to find her, were he by some chance still alive. It was hopeless to think of hiding myself from him. 

"Unless he could be induced to believe that I was dead, he would never cease in his search for me, and I would be forever trapped in wretchedness with a man I now despised. My brain was dazed as I thought of my peril. Again the balance trembled, again the invisible boundary was passed, again I was mad. 

"I need not dwell upon this business. I visited my daughter’s new grave, and in secrecy had the headstone amended to include my name. It was a crime, no doubt, but undertakers are not such a scrupulous lot that the wiles of a beautiful and cunning woman cannot manipulate their cooperation in such a matter. I have learned to use my beauty to my best advantage, you see; it is my chief weapon of protection.

"With the last of my money, I caused the notice to be inserted in the Times. This, I take it, is how John first discovered the plot.

"Meanwhile, I had seen an advertisement in that same newspaper, and I presented myself to Mrs. Vincent, the advertiser, under a feigned name. She accepted me, waiving all questions as to my antecedents. You know the rest. I came here, and you made me an offer, the acceptance of which would lift me at once out of poverty, out of helplessness, out of despair.

"I had received no token of my husband's existence. I said to myself, 'I cannot deny myself an end to helplessness, and end to poverty and misery in consideration of a man who abandoned me. John Watson shall not stand between me and prosperity.' I said this, and I became your wife, Sir Michael, with every resolution to be as good a wife as it was in my nature to be. 

"I was very happy in the first triumph and grandeur of my new position, very grateful to the hand that had lifted me to it. In the sunshine of my own happiness I felt, for the first time in my life, for the miseries of others. I had been poor myself, and I was now rich, and could afford to pity and relieve the poverty of my neighbors. I took pleasure in acts of kindness and benevolence. I found out my father's address and sent him large sums of money, anonymously, for I did not wish him to discover what had become of me. I availed myself to the full of the privilege your generosity afforded me. I dispensed happiness on every side. I saw myself loved as well as admired, and I think I might have been a good woman for the rest of my life, for I had remade myself as the woman the world loved. Was I not wealthy, devoted, beautiful, simple? Did I not conform? 

"I believe that at this time my mind regained its just balance. I had watched myself very closely since leaving London; I had held a check upon myself. I had often wondered while sitting in the surgeon's quiet family circle whether any suspicion of that invisible mental taint had ever occurred to Mr. Dawson. 

"But fate would not suffer me to be good. My destiny compelled me to be a wretch. Within a month of my marriage to Sir Michael, I read in one of the Essex papers of the return of a certain Mr. Watson, a fortunate gold-seeker, from India. The ship had sailed at the time I read the paragraph, and from that moment on, fear tormented me.” 

Sir Michael Stamford rose slowly, and with a stiff, constrained action, as if every physical sense had been benumbed by that one sense of misery. 

"I cannot hear any more," he said, in a hoarse whisper; "if there is anything more to be told I cannot hear it. Sherlock, it is you who have brought about this discovery, as I understand. I want to know nothing more. Will you take upon yourself the duty of providing for the safety and comfort of this lady whom I have thought my wife? I need not ask you to remember in all you do, that I have loved her very dearly and truly. I cannot say farewell to her. I will not say it until I can think of her without bitterness—until I can pity her, as I now pray that God may pity her this night." 

Sir Michael walked slowly from the room. He did not trust himself to look at that crouching figure. He did not wish to see the creature whom he had cherished. He went straight to his dressing-room, rung for his valet, and ordered him to pack a portmanteau, and make all necessary arrangements for accompanying his master by the last up-train. 

* * * * *

Sherlock Holmes followed Sir Michael into the vestibule after he had spoken those few quiet words which sounded the death-knell of his hope and love. Heaven knows how much the young man had feared the coming of this day. It had come; and though there had been no great outburst of despair, no whirlwind of stormy grief, no loud tempest of anguish and tears, Sherlock took no comforting thought from the unnatural stillness. He knew enough to know that Sir Michael Stamford went away with the barbed arrow, which his own hand had sent home to its aim, rankling in his tortured heart; he knew that this strange and icy calm was the first numbness of a heart stricken by grief so unexpected as for a time to be rendered almost incomprehensible by a blank stupor of astonishment; he knew that when this dull quiet had passed away, when little by little, and one by one, each horrible feature of the sufferer's sorrow became first dimly apparent and then terribly familiar to him, the storm would burst in fatal fury, and tempests of tears and cruel thunder-claps of agony would rend that generous heart. 

Sherlock had heard of cases in which men of Sir Michael’s age had borne some great grief with a strange quiet; and had gone away from those who would have comforted them, and whose anxieties have been relieved by this patient stillness, to fall down upon the ground and die under the blow which at first had only stunned him. He remembered cases in which paralysis and apoplexy had stricken men as strong as Sir Michael in the first hour of the horrible affliction; and he lingered in the lamp-lit vestibule, wondering whether it was not his duty to be with Sir Michael—to be near him, in case of any emergency, and to accompany him wherever he went. 

Yet would it be wise to force himself upon that gray-headed sufferer in this cruel hour, in which he had been awakened from the one delusion of a blameless life to discover that he had been the dupe of a false face, and the fool of a nature which was too coldly mercenary, too cruelly heartless, to be sensible of its own infamy? 

"No," thought Sherlock Holmes, "I will not intrude upon the anguish of this wounded heart. There is humiliation mingled with this bitter grief. It is better he should fight the battle alone. I have done what I believe to have been my solemn duty, yet I should scarcely wonder if I had rendered myself forever hateful to him. It is better he should fight the battle alone. I can do nothing to make the strife less terrible. Better that it should be fought alone." 

While the young man stood with his hand upon the library door, still half-doubtful whether he should follow Sir Michael or re-enter the room in which he had left that more wretched creature whom it had been his business to unmask, Molly Stamford opened the dining-room door, and revealed to him the old-fashioned oak-paneled apartment, the long table covered with showy damask, and bright with a cheerful glitter of glass and silver. 

"Is papa coming to dinner?" asked Miss Stamford. "I'm so hungry; and poor Tomlins has sent up three times to say the fish will be spoiled. It must be reduced to a species of isinglass soup, by this time, I should think," added the young lady, as she came out into the vestibule with the Times newspaper in her hand. 

She had been sitting by the fire reading the paper, and waiting for her seniors to join her at the dinner table. 

"Oh, it's you, Sherlock." she remarked, indifferently. "You dine with us of course. Pray go and find papa. It must be nearly eight o'clock, and we are supposed to dine at six." 

Mr. Holmes answered her rather sternly. Her frivolous manner jarred upon him, and he forgot in his irrational displeasure that Miss Stamford had known nothing of the terrible drama which had been so long enacting under her very nose. 

"Your papa has just endured a very great grief, Molly," the young man said, gravely. 

The girl's arch, laughing face changed in a moment to a tenderly earnest look of sorrow and anxiety. Molly Stamford loved her father very dearly. 

"A grief?" she exclaimed; "papa grieved! Oh! Sherlock, what has happened?" 

"I can tell you nothing yet, Molly," Sherlock answered in a low voice. 

He took her by the wrist, and drew her into the dining-room as he spoke. He closed the door carefully behind him before he continued: “Your father is going to leave the Court, for a time at least. The grief which he has just endured—a sudden and unlooked-for sorrow, remember—has no doubt made this place hateful to him." 

"I suppose my lady—" 

"Lady Stamford will not go with him," said Sherlock, gravely; "he is about to separate himself from her." 

"For a time?" 

"No, forever." 

"Separate himself from her forever!" exclaimed Molly. "Then this grief—" 

"Is connected with Lady Stamford. Lady Stamford is the cause of your father's sorrow." 

Molly's face, which had been pale before, flushed crimson. Sorrow, of which my lady was the cause—a sorrow which was to separate Sir Michael forever from his wife! There had been no quarrel between them—there had never been anything but harmony and sunshine between Lady Stamford and her generous husband. This sorrow must surely then have arisen from some sudden discovery; it was, no doubt, a sorrow associated with disgrace. Sherlock Holmes understood the meaning of that vivid blush. 

"You must assume his place here at the Court while he is away," he said. "You are his natural auxiliary. Try to restore his home to what it was before the woman in yonder room came between you and your father's love." 

"I will," murmured Molly, "I will." 

"You must avoid all mention of Lady Stamford's name. If your father is often silent, be patient; if it sometimes seems to you that the shadow of this great sorrow will never pass away from his life, be patient still; and remember that there can be no better hope of a cure of his grief than the hope that his daughter's devotion may lead him to remember there is one woman upon this earth who will love him truly and purely until the last." 

"Yes—yes, Sherlock, dear, I will remember." 

Mr. Holmes, for the first time since he had been a schoolboy, took her in his arms and kissed her forehead. 

"My dear Molly," he said, "do this and you will make me happy. I have been in some measure the means of bringing this sorrow upon your father. Let me hope that it is not an enduring one. Try and restore him to happiness, Molly. You know that I love you more dearly than brother ever loved a noble-hearted sister; and a brotherly affection may be worth having, perhaps, after all, my dear, though it is very different to poor Sir Gregory’s enthusiastic worship." 

Molly's head was bent and her face hidden from Sherlock while he spoke, but she lifted her head when he had finished, and looked him full in the face with a smile that was only the brighter for her eyes being filled with tears. 

"You are a good fellow, Sherlock," she said; "and I've been very foolish and wicked to feel angry with you." 

The young lady stopped suddenly, and asked, “do you think papa will go to-night?" 

"Yes, my dear; I don't think Sir Michael will rest another night under this roof yet awhile." 

"The mail goes at twenty minutes past nine," said Molly; "he must leave the house in an hour if he is to travel by it. I must quickly pack for him." 

Miss Stamford ran off to her room to summon her maid, and make all necessary preparations for the sudden journey, of whose ultimate destination she was as yet quite ignorant. 

She went heart and soul into the carrying out of the duty which Sherlock had dictated to her. She assisted in the packing of Sir Michael’s portmanteaus, thinking all the time of her father's unknown grief, and perhaps a little of the serious face and earnest voice which had that night revealed Sherlock to her in a new character. 

Mr. Holmes went up-stairs after his Molly, and found his way to Sir Michael's dressing-room. He knocked at the door and listened, Heaven knows how anxiously, for the expected answer. There was a moment's pause, during which the young man's heart beat loud and fast, and then the door was opened by the baronet himself.

Sir Michael came out into the corridor. 

"Have you anything more to say to me, Sherlock?" he asked, quietly. 

"I only came to ascertain if I could assist in any of your arrangements. You go to London by the mail?" 

"Yes." 

"Molly is seeing to your packing. Have you any idea of where you will stay?" 

"Yes, I shall stop at the Clarendon; I am known there. Is that all you have to say?" 

"Yes; except that I am sorry. I am so very sorry.” 

"Yes, yes, I know you are," interrupted the baronet. He spoke in a strange, subdued voice, and with an apparent effort, as if it were painful to him to have to speak at all; as if all this ordinary business of life were a cruel torture to him, and jarred so much upon his grief as to be almost worse to bear than that grief itself. 

"Very well, my dear sir, then all is arranged." 

"Very good, very good," muttered the baronet; "let Molly come to me now if she pleases, poor child, let her come." 

He sighed heavily as he spoke in that half pitying tone of his daughter. He was thinking how comparatively indifferent he had been toward that only child for the sake of the woman now shut in the fire-lit room below. 

"I shall see you again before you go, sir," said Sherlock; "I will leave you till then." 

"Stay!" said Sir Michael, suddenly; "what have you told Molly?" 

"I have told her nothing, except that you are about to leave the Court for some time." 

"You are very good, my boy, you are very good," the baronet murmured in a broken voice. 

He stretched out his hand. Sherlock took it in both his own, and pressed it to his lips. 

"Oh, sir! how can I ever forgive myself?" he said; "how can you but hate me for having brought this grief upon you?" 

"No, no, Sherlock, you did right; I wish that God had been so merciful to me as to take my miserable life before this night; but you did right." 

Sir Michael re-entered his dressing-room, and Sherlock slowly returned to the vestibule. He paused upon the threshold of that chamber in which he had left Mary—Lady Stamford, otherwise Maria Watson, the wife of his lost friend. 

She was lying upon the floor, upon the very spot in which she had crouched at her husband's feet telling her guilty story. Whether she was in a swoon, or whether she lay there in the utter helplessness of her misery, Sherlock scarcely cared to know. He went out into the vestibule, and sent one of the servants to look for her maid, the smart, be-ribboned damsel who was loud in wonder and consternation at the sight of her mistress. 

"Lady Stamford is very ill," he said; "take her to her room and see that she does not leave it to-night. You will be good enough to remain near her, but do not either talk to her or suffer her to excite herself by talking." 

My lady had not fainted; she allowed the girl to assist her, and rose from the ground upon which she had groveled. Her golden hair fell in loose, disheveled masses about her ivory throat and shoulders, her face and lips were colorless, her eyes terrible in their unnatural light. 

"Take me away," she said, "and let me sleep! Let me sleep, for my brain is on fire!" 

As she was leaving the room with her maid, she turned and looked at Sherlock. "Is Sir Michael gone?" she asked. 

"He will leave in half an hour." 

"There were no lives lost in the fire at the Castle Inn?" 

"None." 

"I am glad of that." 

"The landlord of the house, Milverton, was very terribly burned, and lies in a precarious state at his mother's cottage; but he may recover." 

"I am glad of that—I am glad no life was lost. Good-night, Mr. Holmes." 

"I shall ask to see you for half an hour's conversation in the course of to-morrow, my lady." 

"Whenever you please. Good night." 

"Good night." 

She went away quietly leaning upon her maid's shoulder, and leaving Sherlock with a sense of strange bewilderment that was very painful to him. 

He sat down by the broad hearth upon which the red embers were fading, and wondered at the change in that old house which, until the day of his friend's disappearance, had been so pleasant a home for all who sheltered beneath its hospitable roof. He sat brooding over the desolate hearth, and trying to decide upon what must be done in this sudden crisis. He sat helpless and powerless to determine upon any course of action, lost in a dull reverie, from which he was aroused by the sound of carriage-wheels driving up to the little turret entrance. 

It was five minutes past nine when Sir Michael came down-stairs, followed by his valet, grave and gray-haired like himself. The baronet was pale, but calm and self-possessed. The hand which he gave to Sherlock was as cold as ice, but it was with a steady voice that he bade the young man good-by. 

"I leave this affair in your hands, Sherlock," he said, as he turned to leave the house in which he had lived so long. "I may not have heard the end, but I have heard enough. Heaven knows I have no need to hear more. I leave all to you, but you will not be cruel—you will remember how much I loved—" 

His voice broke huskily before he could finish the sentence. 

"I will remember you in everything, sir," the young man answered. "I will do everything for the best." 

A treacherous mist of tears blinded him and shut out Sir Michael's face, and in another minute the carriage had driven away, and Sherlock Holmes sat alone in the dark library, where only one red spark glowed among the pale gray ashes. He sat alone, trying to think what he ought to do, and with the awful responsibility of a woman's fate upon his shoulders. 

One of the servants brought candles into the library and relighted the fire, but Sherlock Holmes did not stir from his seat by the hearth. He sat as he had often sat in his chambers in Figtree Court, with his elbows resting upon the arms of his chair, and his chin upon his hand. 

But he lifted his head as the servant was about to leave the room. 

"Can I send a message from here to London?" he asked. 

"It can be sent from Brentwood, sir—not from here." 

Mr. Holmes looked at his watch thoughtfully. 

"One of the men can ride over to Brentwood, sir, if you wish any message to be sent." 

"I do wish to send a message; will you manage it for me, Richards?" 

"Certainly, sir." 

"You can wait, then, while I write the message." 

"Yes, sir." 

The man brought writing materials from one of the side-tables, and placed them before Mr. Holmes. 

Sherlock dipped a pen in the ink, and stared thoughtfully at one of the candles for a few moments before he began to write. 

The message ran thus: 

"From Sherlock Holmes, of Stamford Court, Essex, to Dr. Sebastian Wilkes, Harley Street, London. 

"DEAR SEB—Require your expertise urgently. Confidentiality of the utmost importance. Come to Stamford Court at your earliest convenience." 

Mr. Holmes sealed this document in a stout envelope, and handed it to the man, with a sovereign. 

"You will see that this is given to a trustworthy person, Richards," he said, "and let the man wait at the station for the return message. He ought to get it in an hour and a half." 

Mr. Richards, who had known Sherlock Holmes in jackets and turn-down collars, departed to execute his commission. Heaven forbid that we should follow him into the comfortable servants' hall at the Court, where the household sat round the blazing fire, discussing in utter bewilderment the events of the day. 

Nothing could be wider from the truth than the speculations of these worthy people. What clue had they to the mystery of that firelit room in which a guilty woman had knelt at their master's feet to tell the story of her sinful life? They only knew that which Sir Michael's valet had told them of this sudden journey. How his master was as pale as a sheet, and spoke in a strange voice that didn't sound like his own, somehow, and how you might have knocked him—Mr. Parsons, the valet—down with a feather, if you had been minded to prostrate him by the aid of so feeble a weapon. 

The wiseheads of the servants' hall decided that Sir Michael had received sudden intelligence through Mr. Sherlock—they were wise enough to connect the young man with the catastrophe—either of the death of some near and dear relation—the elder servants decimated the Stamford family in their endeavors to find a likely relation—or of some alarming fall in the funds, or of the failure of some speculation or bank in which the greater part of the baronet's money was invested. The general leaning was toward the failure of a bank, and every member of the assembly seemed to take a dismal and raven-like delight in the fancy, though such a supposition involved their own ruin in the general destruction of that liberal household. 

Sherlock sat by the dreary hearth, which seemed dreary even now when the blaze of a great wood-fire roared in the wide chimney, and listened to the low wail of the March wind moaning round the house and lifting the shivering ivy from the walls it sheltered. He was tired and worn out, for remember that he had been awakened from his sleep at two o'clock that morning by the hot breath of blazing timber and the sharp crackling of burning woodwork. But for his presence of mind and cool decision, Mr. Charlie Milverton would have died a dreadful death. He still bore the traces of the night's peril, for the dark hair had been singed upon one side of his forehead, and his left hand was red and inflamed, from the effect of the scorching atmosphere out of which he had dragged the landlord of the Castle Inn. He was thoroughly exhausted with fatigue and excitement, and he fell into a heavy sleep in his easy-chair before the bright fire, from which he was only awakened by the entrance of Mr. Richards with the return message. 

This return message was very brief. 

"DEAR SHERLOCK—Pleased to oblige. Will arrive by first morning train." 

"My room is ready, I suppose, Richards?" said Sherlock. 

"Yes, sir—your old room." 

"Very good. I shall go to bed at once. Bring me a glass of brandy and water as hot as you can make it." 

Mr. Holmes felt that he had done all that he could do. He drank his brandy and water. He had actual need of the diluted alcohol, for he had been chilled to the bone by his adventures during the fire. He slowly sipped the pale golden liquid and thought of Harriet Watson, of that earnest girl whose brother's memory was now avenged, whose brother's destroyer was humiliated in the dust. Had she heard of the fire at the Castle Inn? How could she have done otherwise than hear of it in such a small place? Sherlock Holmes was weak enough to let his fancy wander away to the dismal fir-trees under the cold March sky, and the sensitive eyes that were so like the eyes of his lost friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Sunday Summer Serial: thanks to redscudery for the brilliant idea!
> 
> Thursday Teasers posted on my Tumblr (http://doctornerdington.tumblr.com).
> 
> Comments GREATLY appreciated!


	13. My Lady Tells the Truth (Part B)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters remaining. Where has the summer gone?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a posthumous collaboration with Mary Elizabeth Braddon; I've adapted her novel Lady Audley's Secret, and retained much of her original structure and language. ALL CREDIT TO HER.
> 
> Braddon's novel was originally published serially, as this adaptation is. Chapter updates every Sunday throughout the summer!

My lady slept. Through that long winter night she slept soundly. Criminals have often so slept their last sleep upon earth; and have been found in the gray morning slumbering peacefully, by the jailer who came to wake them. 

The game had been played and lost. I do not think that my lady had thrown away a card, or missed the making of a trick which she might by any possibility have made; but her opponent's hand had been too powerful for her, and he had won. She abandoned herself to a dull indifference. She had lived a hundred lives within the space of the last few days of her existence, and she had worn out her capacity for suffering—for a time at least. 

She ate her breakfast, and took her morning bath, and emerged, with perfumed hair and in the most exquisitely careless of morning toilets, from her luxurious dressing-room. She looked at herself in the cheval-glass before she left the room. A long night's rest had brought back the delicate rose-tints of her complexion, and the natural luster of her blue eyes. That unnatural light which had burned so fearfully the day before had gone, and my lady smiled triumphantly as she contemplated the reflection of her beauty. The days were gone in which her enemies could have branded her with white-hot irons, and burned away the loveliness which had done such mischief. Whatever they did to her they must leave her her beauty, she thought. At the worst, they were powerless to rob her of that natural protection. 

The March day was bright and sunny, with a cheerless sunshine. My lady wrapped herself in an Indian shawl; a shawl that had cost Sir Michael a hundred guineas. I think she had an idea that it would be well to wear this costly garment; so that if hustled suddenly away, she might carry at least one of her possessions with her. Remember how much she had periled for a fine house and gorgeous furniture, for carriages and horses, jewels and laces; and do not wonder if she clung with a desperate tenacity to gauds and gew-gaws, in the hour of her despair. 

Mr. Sherlock Holmes breakfasted in the library. He sat long over his solitary cup of tea, smoking his meerschaum pipe, and meditating darkly upon the task that lay before him. 

"I will appeal to the experience of my old schoolfellow Dr. Wilkes," he thought; "whatever childhood antagonisms lie between us, his reputation for the treatment of mental disorders in ladies is superb. Surely, he will be able to help me. I must only be careful to keep John Watson’s name out of it, for he was acquainted with Sebastian too." 

The first fast train from London arrived at Stamford at half-past ten o'clock, and at five minutes before eleven, Richards, the grave servant, announced Dr. Sebastian Wilkes. 

The physician from Harley Street was a man of about thirty years of age. He was tall and officious-looking, with lantern jaws, and eyes of a muddy brown. However powerful the science of medicine as wielded by Dr. Wilkes, it had not been strong enough to put brightness into his face. He had a strangely genial, and yet slightly menacing countenance; it was the face of a man who had spent the greater part of his life in pursuing professional acclaim, and who had parted with his own individuality and his own passions at the very outset of his career. 

He bowed to Sherlock Holmes, took the opposite seat indicated by him, and addressed his attentive face to the young barrister. Sherlock saw that the physician's glance for a moment lost its quiet look of attention, and became earnest and searching. 

"He is wondering whether I am the patient," thought Mr. Holmes, "and is looking for the diagnoses of madness in my face. The blasted fellow never did like me, and would probably rejoice to see me laid low." 

Dr. Wilkes spoke as if in answer to this thought. 

"Is it not about your own—health—that you wish to consult me?" he said, interrogatively. 

"Oh, no!" 

Dr. Wilkes looked at his watch, a fifty-guinea Benson-made chronometer, which he carried loose in his waistcoat pocket as carelessly as if it had been a potato. 

"I need not remind you that my time is precious," he said; "your telegram informed me that my services were required in a case of urgency, or I should not be here this morning." 

Sherlock Holmes had sat looking gloomily at the fire, wondering how he should begin the conversation. 

"You are very good, Sebastian," he said, rousing himself by an effort, "and I thank you very much for having responded to my summons. I am about to appeal to you upon a subject which is more painful to me than words can describe. I am about to implore your advice in a most difficult case, and I trust almost blindly to your experience to rescue me, and others who are very dear to me, from a cruel and complicated position." 

The business-like attention in Dr. Wilkes’ face grew into a look of interest as he listened to Sherlock Holmes. 

"The revelation made by the patient to the physician is, I believe, as sacred as the confession of a penitent to his priest?" Sherlock asked, gravely. 

"Quite as sacred." 

"A solemn confidence, to be violated under no circumstances?" 

"Most certainly." 

Sherlock Holmes looked at the fire again. How much should he tell, or how little, of the dark history of Sir Michael’s wife? 

"I have been given to understand that you have devoted much of your professional attention to the treatment of insanity in ladies." 

"Yes, my practice is almost confined to the treatment of mental diseases of the upper classes." 

"Such being the case, I think I may venture to conclude that you sometimes receive strange, and even terrible, revelations." 

Dr. Wilkes bowed. 

"The story which I am about to tell you is not my own story," said Sherlock, after a pause; "you will forgive me, therefore, if I once more remind you that I can only reveal it upon the understanding that under no circumstances, or upon no apparent justification, is that confidence to be betrayed." 

Dr. Wilkes bowed again, a little sternly, perhaps, this time. 

"I am all attention, Sherlock," he said. 

Sherlock Holmes drew his chair nearer to that of the physician, and in a low voice began the story which my lady had told upon her knees in that same chamber upon the previous night. Dr. Wilkes’ listening face, turned always toward the speaker, betrayed no surprise at that strange revelation. Sherlock Holmes ended his story at the point at which Sir Michael Stamford had interrupted my lady's confession. He told nothing of the disappearance of John Watson, nor of the horrible suspicions that had grown out of that disappearance. He told nothing of the fire at the Castle Inn. 

Dr. Wilkes shook his head, gravely, when Mr. Holmes came to the end of his story. 

"You have nothing further to tell me?" he said. 

"No. I do not think there is anything more that need be told," Sherlock answered, rather evasively. 

"You would wish to prove that this lady is mad, and therefore irresponsible for her actions?" asked the physician. 

Sherlock Holmes stared, wondering at the doctor. By what process had he so rapidly arrived at the young man's secret desire? 

"Yes, I would rather, if possible, think her mad; I should be glad to find that excuse for her." 

"And to save the esclandre of a Chancery suit, I suppose," said Dr. Wilkes. 

Sherlock shuddered as he bowed an assent to this remark. It was something worse than a Chancery suit that he dreaded with a horrible fear. It was a trial for murder that had so long haunted his dreams. How often he had awoke, in an agony of shame, from a vision of a crowded court-house, and Lady Stamford in a criminal dock, hemmed in on every side by a sea of eager faces. 

Dr. Wilkes made an impatient motion with his hand, and cleared his throat. "I should be very poorly able to meet the contingencies of my professional experience," he said, "if I could not perceive where confidence ends and reservation begins. You have only told me half this lady's story, Holmes. You must tell me more before I can offer you any advice. What has become of the first husband?" 

He asked this question in a decisive tone, as if he knew it to be the key-stone of an arch. 

"I – I do not know." 

"Yes," answered the physician, "but your face has told me what you have withheld from me; it has told me that you suspect." 

Sherlock Holmes was silent. 

"If I am to be of use to you, you must trust me," said the physician. "The first husband disappeared—how and when? I want to know the history of his disappearance." 

Sherlock paused for some time before he replied to this speech; but, by and by, he lifted his head, which had been bent in an attitude of earnest thought, and addressed the physician. Reluctantly, he told the story of John's disappearance, omitting only John’s name, and of his own doubts and fears. 

Dr. Wilkes listened as attentively as he had listened before. Sherlock concluded with an earnest appeal to the physician's best feelings. He implored him to spare the generous old man whose fatal confidence in a wicked woman had brought much misery upon his declining years. 

It was impossible to draw any conclusion, either favorable or otherwise, from Dr. Wilkes’ attentive face. He rose, when Sherlock had finished speaking, and looked at his watch once more. 

"I can only spare you twenty minutes," he said. "I will see the lady." 

"Will you go alone?" 

"Yes, alone, if you please." 

Sherlock rung for my lady's maid, and under convoy of that smart young damsel the physician found his way to the octagon antechamber, and the fairy boudoir with which it communicated. 

Ten minutes afterward, he returned to the library, in which Sherlock sat waiting for him. 

"I have talked to the lady," he said, quietly, "and we understand each other very well. There is latent insanity. Insanity which might never appear; or which might appear only once or twice in a lifetime. It would be a dementia in its worst phase, perhaps; acute and violent mania; but its duration would be very brief, and it would only arise under extreme mental pressure. Long stretches of normalcy lie between episodes, but at those times, the madness is only dormant, not absent. The lady has the cunning of madness, with the prudence of intelligence. I will tell you what she is, Sherlock. She is dangerous!" 

Dr. Wilkes walked up and down the room once or twice before he spoke again. 

“This is not an uncommon problem in women whose weak minds have been taxed, as children, with the over-stimulation of intense study. I have many like her in my private asylum in Richmond: ladies whose wealthy families have sent them to school, thinking it well to have educated daughters, only to find upon their return that they have stooped to unsuitable and sometimes even criminal behavior; the fault is not the ladies’, and the responsibility lies with men of medicine to correct them, as a father would discipline an errant child. The course of treatment I prescribe involves a total removal of all stimulation, mental or physical. My ladies are confined to their beds. Their minds and bodies are granted total rest: activity of any kind is strictly prohibited. Without reading, writing, conversation, or any stimulation, their minds are kept in a state of tranquility that prevents any renewed outbreak of the madness that brought them to us. 

“There is often some resistance at first, on the part of the patient, but we have our methods of dealing with this, and are always able to make them conform. Their madness makes them strong, but we are ever stronger, ever more patient, ever more wise.”

Sherlock Holmes had blanched, noticeably, during Dr. Wilkes’ description of the treatment of his inmates, but he was thinking too rapidly to respond to the good doctor. 

"I assure you,” the doctor went on, “that you need not fear any exposure—any disgrace. I can smuggle her away this very morning, should you wish it, and you and your family need never speak her name, nor see her again, aside from an annual settling of accounts, which I’m sure you will find extremely reasonable,” and here, his eyes fairly glittered. "From the moment in which Lady Stamford enters my house," he said, "her life, so far as life is made up of action and variety, will be finished. Whatever secrets she may have will be secrets forever! Whatever crimes she may have committed she will be able to commit no more. If you were to dig a grave for her in the nearest churchyard and bury her alive in it, you could not more safely shut her from the world and all worldly associations. I believe you could do no better service to society than by doing this."

Sherlock Holmes had barely heard this last reassurance; he was fighting a mental battle with himself: his grief and fury warred with a new compassion, and his promised duty to Sir Michael. Presently, he asked, “you will sign a certificate of insanity, then?” 

“Of course,” the doctor replied. “There is no trouble at all about that,” he said, taking up a pen and signing the proffered document with a flourish. 

Sherlock stood abruptly, and shook the doctor’s hand, drawing him unexpectedly from his chair. “Thank you for coming, Seb,” Sherlock said, hastily pocketing the vital paper. “Your expertise is no doubt greatly appreciated by many prominent families, but we will not be requiring your assistance with Lady Stamford.” 

Dr. Wilkes’ eyebrows all but disappeared under his hair

“Have a care, Sherlock,” he sputtered. “She is dangerous, and professional handling is indicated. You cannot manage her alone;” and then he lowered his voice meaningfully, and added, “especially when your own, shall we say, peculiarities are taken into account.”

At this, Holmes’ eyes darkened, and he raised an arm to usher Dr. Wilkes quickly into the hall. “Richards!” he called. “Please show Dr. Wilkes out.” Turning to Dr. Wilkes, he added quickly, “again, I thank you for your time and kind attention.” And with that modicum of civility, he shut the door of the library in Dr. Wilkes’ surprised face, and turned back to his chair with a shudder. 

The young barrister had constituted himself the denouncer of this wretched woman. He had been her judge; and he was now her jailer. Not until he had delivered his charge into the safe-keeping of another would the dreadful burden be removed from him and his duty done, and yet, he could not bring himself to agree to the treatment Dr. Wilkes had described. The constitution of his own mind and that of Lady Stamford was not, he reflected, entirely different, and he knew that the ‘tranquility’ of Dr. Wilkes’ cure would be a torture worse, even, than death.

But if not Wilkes’ establishment – what was to be done with her? Holmes sat, gazing into the fire for a time. Suddenly, he straightened, remembering a detail of case he had investigated years before for one of his colleagues at Temple.

He wrote a few lines to my lady, telling her that he was going to carry her away from Stamford Court to a place from which she was not likely to return, and requesting her to lose no time in preparing for the journey. He wished to start that evening, if possible, he told her. 

Miss Martin, the lady's maid, thought it a very hard thing to have to pack her mistress' trunks in such a hurry, but my lady assisted in the task. She toiled resolutely in directing and assisting her servant, who scented bankruptcy and ruin in all this packing up and hurrying away, and was therefore rather languid and indifferent in the discharge of her duties; and at six o'clock in the evening she sent her attendant to tell Mr. Holmes that she was ready to depart as soon as he pleased. 

Sherlock had consulted a volume of Bradshaw, and had discovered that Villebrumeuse lay out of the track of all railway traffic, and was only approachable by diligence. The mail for Dover left London Bridge at nine o'clock, and could be easily caught by Sherlock and his charge, as the seven o'clock up-train from Stamford reached Shoreditch at a quarter past eight. Traveling by the Dover and Calais route, they would reach Villebrumeuse by the following afternoon or evening. 

It was late in the afternoon of the next day when the diligence bumped and rattled over the uneven paving of the principal street in Villebrumeuse. 

Sherlock Holmes and my lady had had the coupé of the diligence to themselves for the whole of the journey, for there were not many travelers to Villebrumeuse, and the public conveyance was supported by the force of tradition rather than any great profit attaching to it as a speculation. The coachman had agreed to take them on to their final destination.

My lady had not spoken during the journey, except to decline some refreshments which Sherlock had offered her at a halting place upon the road. Her heart sunk when they left England behind, and she had turned with a feeling of sickness and despair from the dull French landscape. 

"Where are you going to take me?" she asked, at last. "I am tired of being treated like some naughty child, who is put into a dark cellar as a punishment for its offenses. Where are you taking me?" 

"To a place in which you will have ample leisure to repent the past, Mrs. Watson," Sherlock answered, gravely. She flinched at the name, but made no other answer. 

They had left the paved streets behind them, and had emerged out of a great gaunt square, in which there appeared to be about half a dozen cathedrals, into a small boulevard, a broad lamp-lit road, on which the shadows of the leafless branches went and came tremblingly, like the shadows of a paralytic skeleton. There were houses here and there upon this boulevard; stately houses, entre cour et jardin, and with plaster vases of geraniums on the stone pillars of the ponderous gateways. The rumbling hackney-carriage drove upward of three-quarters of a mile along this smooth roadway before it drew up against a gateway, older and more ponderous than any of those they had passed. 

My lady gave a little scream as she looked out of the coach-window. The gaunt gateway was lighted by an enormous lamp; a great structure of iron and glass, in which one poor little shivering flame struggled with the March wind. 

The coachman rang the bell, and a little wooden door at the side of the gate was opened by a gray-haired man, who looked out at the carriage, and then retired. He reappeared three minutes afterward behind the folding iron gates, which he unlocked and threw back to their full extent, revealing a dreary desert of stone-paved courtyard. 

The coachman led his wretched horses into the courtyard, and piloted the vehicle to the principal doorway of the house, a great mansion of gray stone, with several long ranges of windows, many of which were dimly lighted, and looked out like the pale eyes of weary watchers upon the darkness of the night. 

My lady, watchful and quiet as the cold stars in the wintry sky, looked up at these casements with an earnest and scrutinizing gaze. One of the windows was shrouded by a scanty curtain of faded red; and upon this curtain there went and came a dark shadow, the shadow of a woman with a fantastic head dress, the shadow of a restless creature, who paced perpetually backward and forward before the window. 

Sir Michael Stamford's wicked wife laid her hand suddenly upon Sherlock's arm, and pointed with the other hand to this curtained window. 

"I know where you have brought me," she said. "This is a madhouse!" 

Mr. Holmes did not answer her. He had been standing at the door of the coach when she addressed him, and he quietly assisted her to alight, and led her up a couple of shallow stone steps, and into the entrance-hall of the mansion. A neatly-dressed, cheerful-looking, middle-aged woman came tripping out of a little chamber which opened out of the hall, and was very much like the keeper of an hotel. This person smilingly welcome Sherlock and his charge: and after dispatching a servant with the letter, invited them into her pleasant little apartment, which was gayly furnished with bright amber curtains and heated by a tiny stove. 

"Madam finds herself very much fatigued?" the Frenchwoman said, interrogatively, with a look of intense sympathy, as she placed an arm-chair for my lady. 

Mrs. Watson shrugged her shoulders wearily, and looked round the little chamber with a sharp glance of scrutiny that betokened no very great favor. 

"What is this place, Sherlock Holmes?" she cried fiercely. "Do you think I am a child, that you may juggle with and deceive me—what is it? It is what I said just now, is it not?" 

"It is a maison de santé, my lady," the young man answered, gravely. "I have no wish to deceive you." 

My lady paused for a few moments, looking reflectively at Sherlock. 

"A maison de santé," she repeated. "Yes, they manage these things better on the continent. In England we should call it a madhouse. This is a house for mad people, this, is it not, madam?" she said, turning upon the woman, and tapping the polished floor with her foot. 

"Ah, but no, madam," the woman answered with a shrill scream of protest. "It is an establishment of the most agreeable, where one amuses one's self—" 

She was interrupted by the entrance of the principal of this agreeable establishment, a Monsieur Val, who came beaming into the room with a radiant smile illuminating his countenance. 

It was impossible to say how enchanted he was to make the acquaintance of M'sieu. There was nothing upon earth which he was not ready to do for M'sieu in his own person, and nothing under heaven which he would not strive to accomplish for him, and he was quite prepared to undertake the care of the charming and very interesting "Madam—Madam—" 

He rubbed his hands politely, and looked at Sherlock. Mr. Holmes remembered, for the first time, that he should introduce his wretched charge under a feigned name. 

He affected not to hear the proprietor's question. It might seem a very easy matter to have hit upon a heap of names, any one of which would have answered his purpose; but Mr. Holmes appeared suddenly to have forgotten that he had ever heard any mortal appellation except that of himself and of his lost friend. 

Perhaps the proprietor perceived and understood his embarrassment. He at any rate relieved it by turning to the woman who had received them, and muttering something about No. 14, Bis. The woman took a key from a long range of others, that hung over the mantel-piece, and a wax candle from a bracket in a corner of the room, and having lighted the candle, led the way across the stone-paved hall, and up a broad, slippery staircase of polished wood. 

Mr. Holmes had intimated that money would be no object in the care and comfort of his charge. Acting upon this hint, Monsieur Val opened the outer door of a stately suite of apartments, which included a lobby, paved with alternate diamonds of black and white marble, but of a dismal and cellar-like darkness; a saloon furnished with gloomy velvet draperies, and with a certain funereal splendor which is not peculiarly conducive to the elevation of the spirits; and a bed-chamber, containing a bed so wondrously made, as to appear to have no opening whatever in its coverings, unless the counterpane had been split asunder with a pen-knife. 

My lady stared dismally round at the range of rooms, which looked dreary enough in the wan light of a single wax-candle. This solitary flame, pale and ghost-like in itself, was multiplied by paler phantoms of its ghostliness, which glimmered everywhere about the rooms; in the shadowy depths of the polished floors and wainscot, or the window-panes, in the looking-glasses, or in those great expanses of glimmering something which adorned the rooms, and which my lady mistook for costly mirrors, but which were in reality wretched mockeries of burnished tin. 

Amid all the faded splendor of shabby velvet, and tarnished gilding, and polished wood, the woman dropped into an arm-chair, and covered her face with her hands. The whiteness of them, and the starry light of diamonds trembling about them, glittered in the dimly-lighted chamber. She sat silent, motionless, despairing, sullen, and angry, while Sherlock and the French doctor retired to an outer chamber, and talked together in undertones. He had, after great trouble of mind, hit upon the name of Taylor, as a safe and simple substitute for that other name, to which alone my lady had a right. He told the Frenchman that this Mrs. Taylor was distantly related to him—that she had begun to show seeds of the lurking taint of madness; but that she was not to be called "mad." He begged that she might be treated with all tenderness and compassion; that she might receive all reasonable indulgences; but he impressed upon Monsieur Val, that under no circumstances was she to be permitted to leave the house and grounds without the protection of some reliable person, who should be answerable for her safe-keeping. 

Mr. Holmes handed over the necessary certificate for confinement, signed clearly by Dr. Sebastian Wilkes. This—with all necessary arrangements as to pecuniary matters, which were to be settled from time to time between Mr. Holmes and the doctor, unassisted by any agents whatever—was the extent of the conversation between the two men, and occupied about a quarter of an hour. 

My lady sat in the same attitude when they re-entered the bedchamber in which they had left her, with her ringed hands still clasped over her face. 

Sherlock bent over to whisper in her ear. 

"Your name is Madam Taylor here," he said. "I do not think you would wish to be known by your real name." 

She only shook her head in answer to him, and did not even remove her hands from over her face. 

"Madam will have an attendant entirely devoted to her service." said Monsieur Val. "Madam will have all her wishes obeyed; her reasonable wishes, but that goes without saying," monsieur adds, with a quaint shrug. "Every effort will be made to render madam's sojourn at Villebrumeuse agreeable. The inmates dine together when it is wished. I dine with the inmates sometimes; my subordinate, a clever and a worthy man always. I reside with my wife and children in a little pavilion in the grounds; my subordinate resides in the establishment. Madam may rely upon our utmost efforts being exerted to insure her comfort." 

Monsieur was saying a great deal more to the same effect, rubbing his hands and beaming radiantly upon Sherlock and his charge, when madam rose suddenly, erect and furious, and dropping her jeweled fingers from before her face, told him to hold his tongue. 

"Leave me alone with the man who has brought me here." she cried, between her set teeth. "Leave me!" 

She pointed to the door with a sharp, imperious gesture; so rapid that the silken drapery about her arm made a swooping sound as she lifted her hand. The sibilant French syllables hiss through her teeth as she uttered them, and seemed better fitted to her mood and to herself than the familiar English she had spoken hitherto. 

The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders as he went out into the lobby, muttering something about a "beautiful devil." My lady walked with a rapid footstep to the door between the bed-chamber and the saloon; closed it, and with the handle of the door still in her hand, turned and looked at Sherlock Holmes. 

"You have brought me to my grave, Mr. Holmes," she cried; "you have used your power basely and cruelly, and have brought me to a living grave." 

"I have done that which I thought just to others and merciful to you," Sherlock answered, quietly. "I should have been a traitor to society had I suffered you to remain at liberty after—the disappearance of John Watson and the fire at Castle Inn. I have brought you to a place in which you will be kindly treated by people who have no knowledge of your story—no power to taunt or to reproach you. You will lead a quiet and peaceful life, my lady; you are free to read and write as you will. The solitude of your existence in this place will be no greater than that of a king's daughter, who, flying from the evil of the time, was glad to take shelter in a house as tranquil as this. Surely, it is a small atonement which I ask you to render for your sins, a light penance which I call upon you to perform. Live here and repent; nobody will assail you, nobody will torment you. I assure you, there were far less pleasant alternatives, and I have been merciful in bringing you here. I only say to you, repent!" 

"I cannot!" cried my lady, pushing her hair fiercely from her white forehead, and fixing her dilated eyes upon Sherlock Holmes, "I cannot! Has my beauty brought me to this? Have I plotted and schemed to shield myself and laid awake in the long deadly nights, trembling to think of my dangers, for this? You think I care to read? To write? From the confines of an asylum? I assure you, any pleasure I once took in the life of my cursed mind died within me years ago. I had better have given up at once, since this was to be the end. I had better have yielded to the curse that was upon me, and given up when John Watson first came back to England." 

She plucked at the feathery golden curls as if she would have torn them from her head. It had served her so little after all, that gloriously glittering hair, that beautiful nimbus of yellow light that had contrasted so exquisitely with the melting azure of her eyes. She hated herself and her beauty. 

"I would laugh at you and defy you, if I dared," she cried; "I would kill myself and defy you, if I dared. But I am a poor, pitiful coward, and have been so from the first. Afraid of my father’s wrath; afraid of poverty; afraid of John Watson; afraid of you." 

She was silent for a little while, but she held her place by the door, as if determined to detain Sherlock as long as it was her pleasure to do so. 

"Do you know what I am thinking of?" she said, presently. "Do you know what I am thinking of, as I look at you in the dim light of this room? I am thinking of the day upon which John Watson disappeared." 

Sherlock started as she mentioned the name of his lost friend; his face turned pale in the dusky light, and his breathing grew quicker and louder. 

My lady burst forth, then, in her gayest and most delighted laugh; “Look how much you care, Sherlock Holmes. It has been curious to me, all these months, to see how eagerly you waste your sentiment and ruin your health for such a man as this. As his wife, I can tell you: John Watson’s love is no prize.”

To this, Holmes made no reply, aside from a single, violent shake of his head.

"He was standing opposite me, as you are standing now," continued my lady. "You said that you would raze the old house to the ground; that you would root up every tree in the gardens to find your dead friend. You would have had no need to do so much: the body of John Watson lies at the bottom of the old well, in the shrubbery beyond the lime-walk." 

Sherlock Holmes flung his hands and clasped them above his head, with one loud cry of horror. 

"Oh, my God!" he said, after a dreadful pause; "have all the ghastly things that I have thought prepared me so little for the ghastly truth, that it should come upon me like this at last?" 

"He came to me in the lime-walk," resumed my lady, in the same hard, dogged tone as that in which she had confessed the wicked story of her life. "I knew that he would come, and I had prepared myself, as well as I could, to meet him. I was determined to bribe him, to cajole him, to defy him; to do anything sooner than abandon the wealth and the position I had won, and go back to my old life. He came, and he reproached me. He declared that so long as he lived he would never forgive me for the lie that had broken his heart. His heart! As if a man’s heart could possibly make a difference to me.” She laughed cruelly. “He asked after our daughter, and cried feebly, and made terrible insinuations about her death. He told me that I had plucked his heart out of his breast and trampled upon it; and that he had now no heart in which to feel one sentiment of mercy for me. That he would have forgiven me any wrong upon earth, but that one deliberate and passionless wrong that I had done him. He said this and a great deal more, and he told me that no power on earth should turn him from his purpose, which was to take me to the man I had deceived, and make me tell my wicked story. He did not know my secret, that it was possible to drive me mad. He goaded me as you have goaded me; he was as merciless as you have been merciless. We were in the shrubbery at the end of the lime-walk. I was seated upon the broken masonry at the mouth of the well. John Watson was leaning upon the disused windlass, in which the rusty iron spindle rattled loosely whenever he shifted his position. I rose at last, and turned upon him to defy him, as I had determined to defy him at the worst. I told him that if he denounced me to Sir Michael, I would declare him to be a madman or a liar, and I defied him to convince the man who loved me—blindly, as I told him—that he had any claim to me. I was going to leave him after having told him this, when he caught me by the wrist and detained me by force. You saw the bruises that his fingers made upon my wrist, and noticed them, and did not believe the account I gave of them. I could see that, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and I saw that you were a person I should have to fear." 

She paused, as if she had expected Sherlock to speak; but he stood silent and motionless, waiting for the end. 

"John Watson treated me as you treated me," she said, petulantly. "He swore that if there was but one witness of my identity, and that witness was removed from Stamford Court by the width of the whole earth, he would bring him there to swear to my identity, and to denounce me. It was then that I was mad, it was then that I drew the loose iron spindle from the shrunken wood, and saw my first husband sink with one horrible cry into the black mouth of the well. There is a legend of its enormous depth. I do not know how deep it is. It is dry, I suppose, for I heard no splash, only a dull thud. I looked down and I saw nothing but black emptiness. I knelt down and listened, but the cry was not repeated, though I waited for nearly a quarter of an hour—God knows how long it seemed to me!—by the mouth of the well." 

Sherlock Holmes uttered a word of horror when the story was finished. He moved a little nearer toward the door against which Maria Watson stood. Had there been any other means of exit from the room, he would gladly have availed himself of it. He shrank from even a momentary contact with this creature. 

"Let me pass you, if you please," he said, in an icy voice. 

"You see I do not fear to make my confession to you," said Maria Watson; "for two reasons. The first is, that you dare not use it against me, because you know it would kill Sir Michael to see me in a criminal dock; the second is, that the law could pronounce no worse sentence than this—a life-long imprisonment in a mad-house. You see I do not thank you for your mercy, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, for I know exactly what it is worth." 

She moved away from the door, and Sherlock passed her without a word, without a look. 

Half an hour afterward he was in one of the principal hotels at Villebrumeuse, sitting at a neatly-ordered supper-table, with no power to eat; with no power to distract his mind, even for a moment, from the image of that lost friend who had been treacherously murdered in the thicket at Stamford Court.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Sunday Summer Serial: thanks to redscudery for the brilliant idea!
> 
> Thursday Teasers posted on my Tumblr (http://doctornerdington.tumblr.com).
> 
> Comments greatly appreciated -- eager to hear what you all think of Mary's big reveal...
> 
> Next week: "Light in the Darkness."


	14. Light in the Darkness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a posthumous collaboration with Mary Elizabeth Braddon; I've adapted her novel Lady Audley's Secret, and retained much of her original structure and language. ALL CREDIT TO HER.

No feverish sleeper traveling in a strange dream ever looked out more wonderingly upon a world that seemed unreal than Sherlock Holmes, as he stared absently at the flat swamps and dismal poplars around Villebrumeuse. Could it be that he was returning to Stamford Court without the woman who had reigned in it for nearly two years as queen and mistress? He felt as if he had carried off my lady, and had made away with her secretly and darkly, and must now render up an account to Sir Michael of the fate of that woman, whom the baronet had so dearly loved. 

"What shall I tell him?" he thought. "Shall I tell the truth—the horrible, ghastly truth? No; that would be too cruel. His generous spirit would sink under the hideous revelation. Yet, in his ignorance of the extent of this wretched woman's wickedness, he may think, perhaps, that I have been hard with her." 

Brooding thus, Mr. Sherlock Holmes absently watched the cheerless landscape from the seat in the shabby coupé of the diligence, and thought how great a leaf had been torn out of his life, now that the dark story of John Watson was finished. 

What had he to do next? A crowd of horrible thoughts rushed into his mind as he remembered the story that he had heard from the white lips of Maria Watson. His friend—his murdered friend—lay hidden among the moldering ruins of the old well at Stamford Court. He had lain there for six long months, unburied, unknown; hidden in the darkness of the old convent well. What was to be done? 

To institute a search for the remains of the murdered man was to inevitably bring about a coroner's inquest. Should such an inquest be held, it was next to impossible that the history of my lady's crime could fail to be brought to light. To prove that John Watson met with his death at Stamford Court, was to prove almost as surely that my lady had been the instrument of that mysterious death; for the young man had been known to follow her into the lime-walk upon the day of his disappearance. 

"My God!" Sherlock exclaimed, as the full horror of his position became evident to him; "is my John to rest in this unhallowed burial-place because I have condoned the offenses of the woman who murdered him?" 

He felt that there was no way out of this difficulty, and that he should go mad himself with the thinking on it. Sometimes he thought that it little mattered to his dead friend whether he lay entombed beneath a marble monument, whose workmanship should be the wonder of the universe, or in that obscure hiding-place in the thicket at Stamford Court. At another time he would be seized with a sudden horror at the wrong that had been done to the murdered man, and would fain have traveled even more rapidly than the express to Paris could carry him in his eagerness to reach the end of his journey, that he might set right this cruel wrong. 

He was in London at dusk on the second day after that on which he had left Stamford Court, and he drove straight to the Clarendon, to inquire after Sir Michael. He had no intention of seeing him, as he had not yet determined how much or how little he should tell him, but he was very anxious to ascertain how the good man had sustained the cruel shock he had so lately endured. 

"I will just ask his valet," he thought, "he will satisfy me as to Sir Michael’s health. It is less than a week since he left Stamford. I can scarcely expect to hear of any favorable change." 

But Mr. Holmes was not destined to receive news that evening, for the servants at the Clarendon told him that Sir Michael had left by the morning mail for Paris, on his way to Vienna. 

Sherlock was very well pleased to receive this intelligence; it afforded him a welcome respite, for it would be decidedly better to tell the baronet nothing of his guilty wife until he returned to England, with health unimpaired and spirits re-established, it was to be hoped. 

Mr. Holmes drove to the Temple. The chambers which had seemed dreary to him ever since the disappearance of John Watson, were doubly so to-night. For that which had been only a dark suspicion had now become a horrible certainty. There was no longer room for the palest ray, the most transitory glimmer of hope. His worst terrors had been too well founded. 

John Watson had been murdered by the wife he had loved and mourned. 

There were three letters waiting for Mr. Holmes at his chambers. One was from Sir Michael, and another from Molly. The third was addressed in a hand the young barrister knew only too well, though he had seen it but once before. His face flushed at the sight of the superscription, and he took the letter in his hand, carefully and tenderly, as if it had been a living thing, and sentient to his touch. Harriet Watson was all he had left of John, now, and was doubly precious to him because of it. 

He opened the first two letters. Molly's told him that she had consulted quite confidentially with several prominent doctors about Sir Michael’s health, and that all had advised her that there was no present danger of any serious consequence from this great grief, but that it was necessary that every effort should be made to arouse Sir Michael from apathy, and to force him, however unwillingly, into distraction. 

Molly had immediately acted upon this advice, had resumed her old empire and demanded Sir Michael take himself off to the continent so that she might restore the house to the condition it was in before he had married. With considerable difficulty and an extravagant number of telegraphic messages between Stamford and London, she had induced him to consent, and having once gained her point, she had contrived that he should leave England as soon as it was possible to do so. She told Sherlock, in conclusion, that she would not bring her father back to his old house until she had eradicated all trace of my lady within it, and thereby, she hoped, the sorrows associated with it. 

The baronet's letter was very brief. It contained half a dozen blank cheques on Sir Michael Stamford's London bankers. 

"You will require money, my dear Sherlock," he wrote, "for such arrangements as you may think fit to make for the future comfort of the person I committed to your care. I need scarcely tell you that those arrangements cannot be too liberal. But perhaps it is as well that I should tell you now, for the first and only time, that it is my earnest wish never again to hear that person's name. I have no wish to be told the nature of the arrangements you may make for her. I am sure that you will act conscientiously and mercifully. I seek to know no more. Whenever you want money, you will draw upon me for any sums that you may require; but you will have no occasion to tell me for whose use you want that money." 

Sherlock Holmes breathed a long sigh of relief as he folded this letter. It released him from a duty which it would have been most painful for him to perform, and it decided his course of action with regard to the murdered man. 

John Watson must lie at peace in his unknown grave, and Sir Michael Stamford must never learn that the woman he had loved bore the red brand of murder on her soul. 

Sherlock had only the third letter to open—the letter which he had placed in his bosom while he read the others; he tore open the envelope, handling it carefully and tenderly as he had done before. 

The letter was as brief as Sir Michael's. It contained only these few lines: 

"DEAR MR. HOLMES—The rector of this place has been twice to see Milverton, the man you saved in the fire at the Castle Inn. He lies in a very precarious state at his mother's cottage, near Stamford Court, and is not expected to live many days. His wife is attending him, and both he and she have expressed a most earnest desire that you should see him before he dies. Pray come without delay.  
Yours very sincerely,  
HARRIET WATSON.  
Stamford Rectory, March 6." 

Sherlock Holmes seated himself in his favorite arm-chair, filled and lighted a pipe and smoked it out, staring reflectingly at the fire as long as his tobacco lasted. "What can that man Milverton want with me," thought the barrister. "He is afraid to die until he has made confession, perhaps. He wishes to tell me that which I know already—the story of my lady's crime. I knew that he was in the secret. I was sure of it even upon the night on which I first saw him. He knew the secret, and he traded on it." 

Sherlock shrank strangely from returning to Essex. How could he face Harriet Watson now that he knew the secret of her brother's fate? How many lies he should have to tell, or how much equivocation he must use in order to keep the truth from her? Yet would there be any mercy in telling that horrible story, the knowledge of which must cast a blight upon her youth, and blot out every hope she had even secretly cherished? He knew by his own experience how possible it was to hope against hope, and to hope unconsciously; and he did not know if he should crush her heart as completely as his had been by the knowledge of the truth. 

But she had written to him, imploring him to return to Essex without delay. Could he refuse to do her bidding, however painful its accomplishment might be? And again, the man was dying, perhaps, and had implored to see him. Would it not be cruel to refuse to go—to delay an hour unnecessarily? He looked at his watch. It wanted only five minutes to nine. There was no train to Stamford after the Ipswich mail, which left London at half-past eight; but there was a train that left Shoreditch at eleven, and stopped at Brentwood between twelve and one. Sherlock decided upon going by this train, and walking the distance between Brentwood and Stamford, which was upwards of six miles. 

Fleet Street was quiet and lonely at this late hour, and Sherlock Holmes being in a ghost-seeing mood, would have been scarcely astonished had he seen Johnson's set come roystering westward in the lamp-light, or blind John Milton groping his way down the steps before Saint Bride's Church. 

Mr. Holmes hailed a hansom at the corner of Farrington Street, and was rattled rapidly away across tenantless Smithfield Market, and into a labyrinth of dingy streets that brought him out upon the broad grandeur of Finsbury Pavement. 

The hansom rattled up the steep and stony approach to Shoreditch Station, and deposited Sherlock at the doors of that unlovely temple. There were very few people going to travel by this midnight train, and Sherlock walked up and down the long wooden platform, reading the huge advertisements whose gaunt lettering looked wan and ghastly in the dim lamplight. 

He had the carriage in which he sat all to himself. All to himself did I say? Had he not lately summoned to his side that ghostly company which of all companionship is the most tenacious? The shadow of John Watson pursued him, even in the comfortable first-class carriage, and was behind him when he looked out of the window, and was yet far ahead of him and the rushing engine, in that thicket toward which the train was speeding, by the side of the unhallowed hiding-place in which the mortal remains of the dead man lay, neglected and uncared for. 

"I must give my lost friend decent burial," Sherlock thought, as the chill wind swept across the flat landscape, and struck him with such frozen breath as might have emanated from the lips of the dead. "I must do it; or I shall die of some panic like this which has seized upon me to-night. I must do it; at any peril; at any cost. Even at the price of that revelation which will bring the mad woman back from her safe hiding-place, and place her in a criminal dock." He was glad when the train stopped at Brentwood at a few minutes after twelve. 

It was half-past one o'clock when the night wanderer entered the village of Stamford, and it was only there that he remembered that Harriet Watson had omitted to give him any direction by which he might find the cottage in which Charlie Milverton lay. 

"It was Dawson who recommended that the poor creature should be taken to his mother's cottage," Sherlock thought, by-and-by, "and I expect Dawson has attended him ever since the fire. He'll be able to tell me the way to the cottage." 

Acting upon this idea, Mr. Holmes stopped at the house in which Maria Watson had lived before her second marriage. The door of the little surgery was ajar, and there was a light burning within. Sherlock pushed the door open and peeped in. The surgeon was standing at the mahogany counter, mixing a draught in a glass measure, with his hat close beside him. Late as it was, he had evidently only just come in. The harmonious snoring of his assistant sounded from a little room within the surgery. 

"I am sorry to disturb you, Mr. Dawson," Sherlock said, apologetically, as the surgeon looked up and recognized him, "but I have come down to see Milverton, who, I hear, is in a very bad way, and I want you to tell me the way to his mother's cottage." 

"I'll show you the way, Mr. Holmes," answered the surgeon, "I am going there this minute." 

"The man is very bad, then?" 

"So bad that he can be no worse. The change that can happen is that change which will take him beyond the reach of any earthly suffering." 

"Strange!" exclaimed Sherlock. "He did not appear to be much burned." 

"He was not much burnt. Had he been, I should never have recommended his being moved. It is the shock that has done the business. He has been in a raging fever for the last two days; but to-night he is much calmer, and I'm afraid, before to-morrow night, we shall have seen the last of him." 

"He has asked to see me, I am told," said Mr. Holmes. 

"Yes," answered the surgeon, carelessly. "A sick man's fancy, no doubt. You dragged him out of the house, and did your best to save his life. I dare say, rough and boorish as the poor fellow is, he thinks a good deal of that." 

They had left the surgery, the door of which Mr. Dawson had locked behind him. There was money in the till, perhaps, for surely the village apothecary could not have feared that the most daring housebreaker would imperil his liberty in the pursuit of blue pill and colocynth, of salts and senna. 

The surgeon led the way along the silent street, and presently turned into a lane at the end of which Sherlock Holmes saw the wan glimmer of a light; a light which told of the watch that is kept by the sick and dying; a pale, melancholy light, which always has a dismal aspect when looked upon in this silent hour betwixt night and morning. It shone from the window of the cottage in which Charlie Milverton lay, watched by his wife and mother. 

Mr. Dawson lifted the latch, and walked into the common room of the little tenement, followed by Sherlock Holmes. It was empty, but a feeble tallow candle, with a broken back, and a long, cauliflower-headed wick, sputtered upon the table. The sick man lay in the room above. 

"Shall I tell him you are here?" asked Mr. Dawson. 

"Yes, yes, if you please. But be cautious how you tell him, if you think the news likely to agitate him. I am in no hurry. I can wait. You can call me when you think I can safely come up-stairs." 

The surgeon nodded, and softly ascended the narrow wooden stairs leading to the upper chamber. 

Sherlock Holmes seated himself in a Windsor chair by the cold hearth-stone, and stared disconsolately about him. But he was relieved at last by the low voice of the surgeon, who looked down from the top of the little staircase to tell him that Charlie Milverton was awake, and would be glad to see him. 

Sherlock immediately obeyed this summons. He crept softly up the stairs, and took off his hat before he bent his head to enter at the low doorway of the humble rustic chamber. He took off his hat in the presence of this common peasant man, because he knew that there was another and a more awful presence hovering about the room, and eager to be admitted. 

Jeannine Milverton was sitting at the foot of the bed, with her eyes fixed upon her husband's face—not with any very tender expression in the pale light, but with a sharp, terrified anxiety, which showed that it was the coming of death itself that she dreaded, rather than the loss of her husband. The old woman was busy at the fire-place, airing linen, and preparing some mess of broth which it was not likely the patient would ever eat. The sick man lay with his head propped up by pillows, his coarse face deadly pale, and his great hands wandering uneasily about the coverlet. Jeannine had been reading to him, for an open Testament lay among the medicine and lotion bottles upon the table near the bed. Every object in the room was neat and orderly, and bore witness of that delicate precision which had always been a distinguishing characteristic of Jeannine. 

The young woman rose as Sherlock Holmes crossed the threshold, and hurried toward him. 

"Let me speak to you for a moment, sir, before you talk to Charlie," she said, in an eager whisper. "Pray let me speak to you first." 

"What's the gal a-sayin', there?" asked the invalid in a subdued roar, which died away hoarsely on his lips. He was feebly savage, even in his weakness. The dull glaze of death was gathering over his eyes, but they still watched Jeannine with a sharp glance of dissatisfaction. "What's she up to there?" he said. "I won't have no plottin' and no hatchin' agen me. I want to speak to Mr. Holmes my own self; and whatever I done I'm goin' to answer for. If I done any mischief, I'm a-goin' to try and undo it. What's she a-sayin'?" 

"She ain't a-sayin' nothin', lovey," answered the old woman, going to the bedside of her son, who even when made more interesting than usual by illness, did not seem a very fit subject for this tender appellation. 

"She's only a-tellin' the gentleman how bad you've been, my pretty." 

"What I'm a-goin' to tell I'm only a-goin' to tell to him, remember," growled Mr. Milverton; "and ketch me a-tellin' of it to him if it warn't for what he done for me the other night." 

"To be sure not, lovey," answered the old woman soothingly. 

Jeannine Milverton had drawn Mr. Holmes out of the room and onto the narrow landing at the top of the little staircase. This landing was a platform of about three feet square, and it was as much as the two could manage to stand upon it without pushing each other against the whitewashed wall, or backward down the stairs. 

"Oh, sir, I wanted to speak to you so badly," Jeannine answered, eagerly; "you know what I told you when I found you safe and well upon the night of the fire?" 

"Yes, yes." 

"I told you what I suspected; what I think still." 

"Yes, I remember." 

"But I never breathed a word of it to anybody but you, sir, and I think that Charlie has forgotten all about that night; I think that what went before the fire has gone clean out of his head altogether. He was tipsy, you know, when my la—when she came to the Castle; and I think he was so dazed and scared like by the fire that it all went out of his memory. He doesn't suspect what I suspect, at any rate, or he'd have spoken of it to anybody or everybody; but he's dreadful spiteful against my lady, for he says if she'd have let him have enough for a place at Brentwood or Chelmsford, this wouldn't have happened. So what I wanted to beg of you, sir, is not to let a word drop before Charlie." 

"Yes, yes, I understand; I will be careful." 

"My lady has left the Court, I hear, sir?" 

"Yes." 

"Never to come back, sir?" 

"Never to come back." 

"But she has not gone where she'll be cruelly treated; where she'll be ill-used?" 

"No: she will be very kindly treated." 

"I'm glad of that, sir; I beg your pardon for troubling you with the question, sir, but my lady was a kind mistress to me." 

Charlie's voice, husky and feeble, was heard within the little chamber at this period of the conversation, demanding angrily when "that gal would have done jawing;" upon which Jeannine put her finger to her lips, and led Mr. Holmes back into the sick-room. 

"I don't want you" said Mr. Milverton, decisively, as his wife re-entered the chamber—"I don't want you; you've no call to hear what I've got to say—I only want Mr. Holmes, and I wants to speak to him all alone, with none o' your sneakin' listenin' at doors, d'ye hear? so you may go down-stairs and keep there till you're wanted; and you may take mother—no, mother may stay, I shall want her presently." 

The sick man's feeble hand pointed to the door, through which his wife departed very submissively. 

"I've no wish to hear anything, Charlie," she said, "but I hope you won't say anything against those that have been good and generous to you." 

"I shall say what I like," answered Mr. Milverton, fiercely, "and I'm not a-goin' to be ordered by you. You ain't the parson, as I've ever heard of; nor the lawyer neither." 

The landlord of the Castle Inn had undergone no moral transformation by his death-bed sufferings, fierce and rapid as they had been. Perhaps some faint glimmer of a light that had been far off from his life now struggled feebly through the black obscurities of ignorance that darkened his soul. Perhaps a half angry, half sullen penitence urged him to make some rugged effort to atone for a life that had been selfish and drunken and wicked. Be it how it might he wiped his white lips, and turning his haggard eyes earnestly upon Sherlock Holmes, pointed to a chair by the bedside. 

"You made game of me in a general way, Mr. Holmes," he said, presently, "and you've drawed me out, and you've tumbled and tossed me about in a gentlemanly way, till I was nothink or anythink in your hands; and you've looked me through and through, and turned me inside out till you thought you knowed as much as I knowed. I'd no particular call to be grateful to you, not before the fire at the Castle t'other night. But I am grateful to you for that. I'm not grateful to folks in a general way, p'r'aps, because the things as gentlefolks give have almost allus been the very things I didn't want. They've given me soup, and tracks, and flannel, and coals; but, Lord, they've made such a precious noise about it that I'd have been to send 'em all back to 'em. But when a gentleman goes and puts his own life in danger to save a drunken brute like me, the drunkenest brute as ever was feels grateful to that gentleman, and wishes to say before he dies—which he sees in the doctor's face as he ain't got long to live: Thank you, sir, I'm obliged to you." 

Charlie Milverton stretched out his left hand—the right hand had been injured by the fire, and was wrapped in linen—and groped feebly for that of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. 

The young man took the coarse but shrunken hand in both his own, and pressed it cordially. 

"I need no thanks, Charlie Milverton," he said; "I was very glad to be of service to you." 

Mr. Milverton did not speak immediately. He was lying quietly upon his side, staring reflectingly at Sherlock Holmes. 

"You was uncommon fond of that gent as disappeared at the Court, warn't you, sir?" he said at last. 

Sherlock started at the mention of his dead friend. 

"You was uncommon fond of that Mr. Watson, I've heard say, sir," repeated Charlie. 

"Yes, yes," answered Sherlock cautiously, "he was my very dear friend." 

"I've heard the servants at the Court say how you took on when you couldn't find him. I've heard the landlord of the Sun Inn say how cut up you was when you first missed him." 

"Yes, yes, I know, I know," said Sherlock. "Pray do not speak any more of this subject. I cannot tell you how much it distresses me." 

Was he to be haunted forever by the ghost of his unburied friend? He came here to comfort the sick man, and even here he was pursued by this relentless shadow; even here he was reminded of the gaping hole in his life. 

"Listen to me, Milverton," he said, earnestly; "believe me that I appreciate your grateful words, and that I am very glad to have been of service to you. But before you say anything more, let me make one most solemn request. If you have sent for me that you may tell me anything of the fate of my lost friend, I entreat you to spare yourself and to spare me that horrible story. You can tell me nothing which I do not already know. The worst you can tell me of the woman who was once in your power, has already been revealed to me by her own lips. Pray, then, be silent upon this subject; I say again, you can tell me nothing which I do not know." 

Charlie Milverton looked musingly at the earnest face of his visitor, and some shadowy expression, which was almost like a smile, flitted feebly across the sick man's haggard features. 

"I can't tell you nothin' you don't know?" he asked. 

"Nothing." 

"Then it ain't no good for me to try," said the invalid, thoughtfully. "Did she tell you?" he asked, after a pause. 

"I must beg, Milverton, that you will drop the subject," Sherlock answered, almost pleadingly. "I have already told you that I do not wish to hear it spoken of. Whatever discoveries you made, you made your market out of them. Whatever guilty secrets you got possession of, you were paid for keeping silence. You had better keep silence to the end." 

"Had I?" cried Charlie Milverton, in an eager whisper. "Had I really now better hold my tongue to the last?" 

"I think so, most decidedly. You traded on your secret, and you were paid to keep it. It would be more honest to hold to your bargain, and keep it still." 

"But, suppose I want to tell something," cried Charlie, with feverish energy, "suppose I feel I can't die with a secret on my mind, and have asked to see you on purpose that I might tell you; suppose that, and you'll suppose nothing but the truth. I'd have been burnt alive before I'd have told her." He spoke these words between his set teeth, and scowled savagely as he uttered them. "I'd have been burnt alive first. I made her pay for her pretty insolent ways; I made her pay for her airs and graces; I'd never have told her—never, never! I had my power over her, and I kept it; I had my secret and was paid for it; and there wasn't a petty slight as she ever put upon me or mine that I didn't pay her out for twenty times over!" 

"Milverton, Milverton, for Heaven's sake be calm," said Sherlock, earnestly. "What are you talking of? What is it that you could have told?" 

"I'm a-goin to tell you," answered Charlie, wiping his lips. "Give us a drink, mother." 

The old woman poured out some cooling drink into a mug, and carried it to her son. 

He drank it in an eager hurry, as if he felt that the brief remainder of his life must be a race with the pitiless pedestrian, Time. 

"Stop where you are," he said to his mother, pointing to a chair at the foot of the bed. 

The old woman obeyed, and seated herself meekly opposite to Mr. Holmes. 

"I'll ask you another question, mother," said Charlie, "and I think it'll be strange if you can't answer it. Do you remember when I was at work upon Atkinson's farm; before I was married, and when I was livin' down here along of you?" 

"Yes, yes," Mrs. Milverton answered, nodding triumphantly, "I remember that, my dear. It were last fall, just about as the apples was bein' gathered in the orchard across our lane, and about the time as you had your new sprigged wesket. I remember, Charlie, I remember." 

Mr. Holmes wondered where all this was to lead to, and how long he would have to sit by the sick man's bed, hearing a conversation that had no meaning to him. 

"If you remember that much, maybe you'll remember more, mother," said Charlie. "Can you call to mind my bringing some one home here one night, while Atkinsons was stackin' the last o' their corn?" 

Once more Mr. Holmes started violently, and this time he looked up earnestly at the face of the speaker, and listened, with a strange, breathless interest, that he scarcely understood himself, to what Charlie Milverton was saying. 

"I rek'lect your bringing home Jeannine," the old woman answered, with great animation. "I rek'lect your bringin' Jeannine home to take a cup o' tea, or a little snack o' supper, a mort o' times." 

"Bother Jeannine," cried Mr. Milverton, "who's a talkin' of Jeannine? What's Jeannine, that anybody should go to put theirselves out about her? Do you remember my bringin' home a gentleman after ten o'clock, one September night; a gentleman as was wet through to the skin, and was covered with mud and slush, and green slime and black muck, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, and had his arm broke, and his shoulder swelled up awful; and was such a objeck that nobody would ha' knowed him; a gentleman as had to have his clothes cut off him in some places, and as sat by the kitchen fire, starin' at the coals as if he had gone mad or stupid-like, and didn't know where he was, or who he was; and as had to be cared for like a baby, and dressed, and dried, and washed, and fed with spoonfuls of brandy, that had to be forced between his locked teeth, before any life could be got into him? Do you remember that, mother?" 

The old woman nodded, and muttered something to the effect that she remembered all these circumstances most vividly, now that Charlie happened to mention them. 

Sherlock Holmes uttered a wild cry, and fell down upon his knees by the side of the sick man's bed. 

"My God!" he whispered, "John Watson is alive!" 

"Wait a bit," said Mr. Milverton, "don't you be too fast. Mother, give us down that tin box on the shelf over against the chest of drawers, will you?" 

The old woman obeyed, and after fumbling among broken teacups and milk-jugs, lidless wooden cotton-boxes, and a miscellaneous litter of rags and crockery, produced a tin snuff-box with a sliding lid; a shabby, dirty-looking box enough. 

Sherlock Holmes still knelt by the bedside with his face hidden by his clasped hands. Charlie Milverton opened the tin box. 

"There ain't no money in it, more's the pity," he said, "or if there had been it wouldn't have been let stop very long. But there's summat in it that perhaps you'll think quite as valliable as money, and that's what I'm goin' to give you as a proof that a drunken brute can feel thankful to them as is kind to him." 

He took out two folded papers, which he gave into Sherlock Holmes's hands. 

They were two leaves torn out of a pocket-book, and they were written upon in pencil, and in a handwriting that was quite strange to Mr. Holmes—a cramped, stiff, and yet scrawling hand, such as some plowman might have written. 

"I don't know this writing," Sherlock said, as he eagerly unfolded the first of the two papers. "What has this to do with my friend? Why do you show me these?" 

"Suppose you read 'em first," said Mr. Milverton, "and ask me questions about them afterwards." 

The first paper which Sherlock Holmes had unfolded contained the following lines, written in that cramped, yet scrawling hand which was so strange to him: 

"MY DEAR FRIEND—I write to you in such utter confusion of mind as perhaps no man ever before suffered. I cannot tell you what has happened to me, I can only tell you that something has happened which must drive me from England a broken man, to seek some corner of the earth in which I may live and die unknown and forgotten, as I deserve. I can only ask you to forget me. If your love could have done me any good, I would have appealed to it. If your counsel could have been any help to me, I would have confided in you. But I am beyond help; and all I can say to you is this, God bless you for the past, and teach you to forget me in the future. J.W." 

The second paper was addressed to another person, and its contents were briefer than those of the first. 

"MARIA—May God pity and forgive you for that which you have done to-day, as truly as I do. Do not be troubled. You shall never hear of me again; to you and to the world I shall henceforth be that which you wished me to be to-day. You need fear no molestation from me. I leave England never to return. J.W." 

Sherlock Holmes sat staring at these lines in hopeless bewilderment. They were not in his friend's familiar hand, and yet they purported to be written by him and were signed with his initials. 

He looked scrutinizingly at the face of Charlie Milverton, thinking that perhaps some trick was being played upon him. 

"This was not written by John Watson," he said. 

"It was," answered Charlie Milverton, "it was written by Mr. Watson, every line of it. He wrote it with his own hand; but it was his right hand, for he couldn't use his left because of his broken arm." 

Sherlock Holmes looked up suddenly, and the shadow of suspicion passed away from his face. 

"I understand," he said, "I understand. Tell me all; tell me how it was that my poor friend was saved." 

"I was at work up at Atkinson's farm, last September," said Charlie Milverton, "helping to stack the last of the corn, and as the nighest way from the farm to mother's cottage was through the meadows at the back of the Court, I used to come that way, and Jeannine used to stand in the garden wall beyond the lime-walk sometimes, to have a chat with me, knowin' my time o' comin' home. 

"I don't know what Jeannine was doing upon the evenin' of the seventh o' September—I recollect the date because Farmer Atkinson paid me my wages all of a lump on that day, and I'd had to sign a bit of a receipt for the money he give me—I don't know what she was a-doing, but she warn't at the gate agen the lime-walk, so I went round to the other side o' the gardens and jumped across the dry ditch, for I wanted partic'ler to see her that night, as I was goin' away to work upon a farm beyond Chelmsford the next day. Stamford church clock struck nine as I was crossin' the meadows between Atkinson's and the Court, and it must have been about a quarter past nine when I got into the kitchen garden. 

"I crossed the garden, and went into the lime-walk; the nighest way to the servants' hall took me through the shrubbery and past the dry well. It was a dark night, but I knew my way well enough about the old place, and the light in the window of the servants' hall looked red and comfortable through the darkness. I was close against the mouth of the dry well when I heard a sound that made my blood creep. It was a groan—a groan of a man in pain, as was lyin' somewhere hid among the bushes. I warn't afraid of ghosts and I warn't afraid of anything in a general way, but there was something in hearin' this groan as chilled me to the very heart, and for a minute I was struck all of a heap, and didn't know what to do. But I heard the groan again, and then I began to search among the bushes. I found a man lyin' hidden under a lot o' laurels, and I thought at first he was up to no good, and I was a-goin' to collar him to take him to the house, when he caught me by the wrist without gettin' up from the ground, but lookin' at me very earnest, as I could see by the way his face was turned toward me in the darkness, and asked me who I was, and what I was, and what I had to do with the folks at the Court. 

"There was somethin' in the way he spoke that told me he was a gentleman, though I didn't know him from Adam, and couldn't see his face; and I answered his questions civil. 

"'I want to get away from this place,' he said, 'without bein' seen by any livin' creature, remember that. I've been lyin' here ever since four o'clock to-day, and I'm half dead, but I want to get away without bein' seen, mind that.' 

"I told him that was easy enough, but I began to think my first thoughts of him might have been right enough, after all, and that he couldn't have been up to no good to want to sneak away so precious quiet. 

"'Can you take me to any place where I can get a change of dry clothes,' he says, 'without half a dozen people knowin' it?' 

"He'd got up into a sittin' attitude by this time, and I could see that his left arm hung close by his side, and that he was in pain. 

"I pointed to his arm, and asked him what was the matter with it; but he only answered, very quiet like: 'Broken, my lad, broken. Not that that's much,' he says in another tone, speaking to himself like, more than to me. 'There's broken hearts as well as broken limbs, and they're not so easy mended.' 

"I told him I could take him to mother's cottage, and that he could dry his clothes there and welcome. 

"'Can your mother keep a secret?' he asked. 

"'Well, she could keep one well enough if she could remember it,' I told him; 'but you might tell her all the secrets of the Freemasons, and Foresters, and Buffalers and Oddfellers as ever was, to-night: and she'd have forgotten all about 'em to-morrow mornin'.' 

"He seemed satisfied with this, and he got himself up by holdin' on to me, for it seemed as if his limbs was cramped, the use of 'em was almost gone. I felt as he came agen me, that his clothes was wet and mucky. 

"'You haven't been and fell into the fish-pond, have you, sir?' I asked. 

"He made no answer to my question; he didn't seem even to have heard it. I could see now he was standin' upon his feet that he was a fine-made man, strong and hardy as me. 

"'Take me to your mother's cottage,' he said, 'and get me some dry clothes if you can; I'll pay you well for your trouble.' 

"I knew that the key was mostly left in the wooden gate in the garden wall, so I led him that way. He could scarcely walk at first, and it was only by leanin' heavily upon my shoulder that he managed to get along. I got him through the gate, leavin' it unlocked behind me, and trustin' to the chance of that not bein' noticed by the under-gardener, who had the care of the key, and was a careless chap enough. I took him across the meadows, and brought him up here, still keepin' away from the village, and in the fields, where there wasn't a creature to see us at that time o' night; and so I got him into the room down-stairs, where mother was a-sittin' over the fire gettin' my bit o' supper ready for me. 

"I put the strange chap in a chair agen the fire, and then for the first time I had a good look at him. I never see anybody in such a state before. He was all over green damp and muck, and his hands was scratched and cut to pieces. I got his clothes off him how I could, for he was like a child in my hands, and sat starin' at the fire as helpless as any baby; only givin' a long heavy sigh now and then, as if his heart was a-goin' to bust. At last he dropped into a kind of a doze, a stupid sort of sleep, and began to nod over the fire, so I ran and got a blanket and wrapped him in it, and got him to lie down on the press bedstead in the room under this. I sent mother to bed, and I sat by the fire and watched him, and kep' the fire up till it was just upon daybreak, when he 'woke up all of a sudden with a start, and said he must go, directly this minute. 

"I begged him not to think of such a thing and told him he warn't fit to move for ever so long; but he said he must go, and he got up, and though he staggered like, and at first could hardly stand steady two minutes together, he wouldn't be beat, and he got me to dress him in his clothes as I'd dried and cleaned as well as I could while he laid asleep. I did manage it at last, but the clothes was awful spoiled, and he looked dreadful, with his pale face and a great cut on his forehead that I'd washed and tied up with a handkerchief. He could only get his coat on by buttoning it on round his neck, for he couldn't put a sleeve upon his broken arm. But he held out agen everything, though he groaned every now and then; and what with the scratches and bruises on his hands, and the cut upon his forehead, and his stiff limbs and broken arm, he'd plenty of call to groan; and by the time it was broad daylight he was dressed and ready to go. 

"'What's the nearest town to this upon the London road?' he asked me. 

"I told him as the nighest town was Brentwood. 

"'Very well, then,' he says, 'if you'll go with me to Brentwood, and take me to some surgeon as'll set my arm, I'll give you a five pound note for that and all your other trouble.' 

"I told him that I was ready and willin' to do anything as he wanted done; and asked him if I shouldn't go and see if I could borrow a cart from some of the neighbors to drive him over in, for I told him it was a good six miles' walk. 

"He shook his head. No, no, no, he said, he didn't want anybody to know anything about him; he'd rather walk it. 

"He did walk it; and he walked like a good 'un, too; though I know as every step he took o' them six miles he took in pain; but he held out as he'd held out before; I never see such a chap to hold out in all my blessed life. He had to stop sometimes and lean agen a gateway to get his breath; but he held out still, till at last we got into Brentwood, and then he says, 'Take me to the nighest surgeon's,' and I waited while he had his arm set in splints, which took a precious long time. The surgeon wanted him to stay in Brentwood till he was better, but he said it warn't to be heard on, he must get up to London without a minute's loss of time; so the surgeon made him as comfortable as he could, considering and tied up his arm in a sling. 

"When his arm was dressed," continued Charlie, "he says to the surgeon, 'Can you give me a pencil to write something before I go away?' The surgeon smiles and shakes his head: 'You'll never be able to write with that there hand to-day,' he says, pointin' to the arm as had just been dressed. 'P'raps not,' the young chap answers, quiet enough, 'but I can write with the other,' 'Can't I write it for you?' says the surgeon. 'No, thank you,' answers the other; 'what I've got to write is private. If you can give me a couple of envelopes, I'll be obliged to you.' 

"With that the surgeon goes to fetch the envelopes, and the young chap takes a pocket-book out of his coat pocket with his right hand; the cover was wet and dirty, but the inside was clean enough, and he tears out a couple of leaves and begins to write upon 'em as you see; and he writes dreadful awk'ard with his right hand, and he writes slow, but he contrives to finish what you see, and then he puts the two bits o' writin' into the envelopes as the surgeon brings him, and he seals 'em up, and he puts a pencil cross upon one of 'em, and nothing on the other: and then he pays the surgeon for his trouble, and the surgeon says, ain't there nothin' more he can do for him, and can't he persuade him to stay in Brentwood till his arm's better; but he says no, no, it ain't possible; and then he says to me, 'Come along o' me to the railway station, and I'll give you what I've promised.' 

"So I went to the station with him. We was in time to catch the train as stops at Brentwood at half after eight, and we had five minutes to spare. So he takes me into a corner of the platform, and he says, 'I wants you to deliver these here letters for me,' which I told him I was willin'. 'Very well, then,' he says; 'look here; you know Stamford Court?' 'Yes,' I says, 'I ought to, for my sweetheart lives lady's maid there.' 'Whose lady's maid?' he says. So I tells him, 'My lady's, the new lady what was governess at Mr. Dawson's.' 'Very well, then,' he says; 'this here letter with the cross upon the envelope is for Lady Stamford, but you're to be sure to give it into her own hands; and remember to take care as nobody sees you give it.' I promises to do this, and he hands me the first letter. And then he says, 'Do you know Mr. Holmes, as is friend to Sir Michael?' and I said, 'Yes, I've heard tell on him, and I've heard as he was a reg'lar swell, but affable and free-spoken' (for I heard 'em tell on you, you know)," Charlie added, parenthetically. "'Now look here,' the young chap says, 'you're to give this other letter to Mr. Sherlock Holmes, whose a-stayin' in the village;' and I tells him it's all right. So then he gives me the second letter, what's got nothing wrote upon the envelope, and he gives me a five-pound note, accordin' to promise; and then he says, 'Good-day, and thank you for all your trouble,' and he gets into a second-class carriage; and the last I sees of him is a face as white as a sheet of writin' paper, and a great patch of stickin'-plaster criss-crossed upon his forehead." 

"Poor John. Oh, my poor John," Sherlock whispered under his breath. 

"I went back to Stamford, and I went straight to the Inn, and asked for you, meanin' to deliver both letters faithful, so help me God! then; but the landlord told me as you'd started off that mornin' for London, and he didn't know when you'd come back, and he didn't know the name o' the place where you lived in London, though he said he thought it was in one o' them law courts, such as Westminster Hall or Doctors' Commons, or somethin' like that. So what was I to do? I couldn't send a letter by post, not knowin' where to direct to, and I couldn't give it into your own hands, and I'd been told particular not to let anybody else know of it; so I'd nothing to do but to wait and see if you come back, and bide my time for givin' of it to you. 

"I thought I'd go over to the Court in the evenin' and see Jeannine, and find out from her when there'd be a chance of seein' her lady, for I know'd she could manage it if she liked. So I didn't go to work that day, though I ought to ha' done, and I lounged and idled about until it was nigh upon dusk, and then I goes down to the meadows behind the Court, and there I finds Jeannine sure enough, waitin' agen the wooden door in the wall, on the lookout for me. 

"I hadn't been talkin' to her long before I see there was something wrong with her and I told her as much. 

"Well,' she says, 'I ain't quite myself this evenin', for I had a upset yesterday, and I ain't got over it yet.' 

"'A upset,' I says. 'You had a quarrel with your missus, I suppose.' 

"She didn't answer me directly, but she gave me the queerest look as ever I see, sort of assessing-like, and presently she says: 

"No, Charlie, it weren't nothin' o' that kind; and what's more, nobody could be friendlier toward me than my lady. I think she'd do anything for me almost; and I think, whether it was a bit o' farming stock and furniture or such like, or whether it was the good-will of a public-house, she wouldn't refuse me anything as I asked her.' 

"I couldn't make out this, for it was only a few days before as she'd told me her missus was selfish and extravagant, and we might wait a long time before we could get what we wanted from her. 

"So I says to her, 'Why, this is rather sudden like, Jeannine;' and she says, 'Yes, it is sudden;' and she looks at me again, just the same sort of look as before. Upon that I turns round upon her sharp, and says: 

"I'll tell you what it is, my gal, you're a-keepin' something from me; something you've been told, or something you've found out; and if you think you're a-goin' to try that game on with me, you'll find you're very much mistaken; and so I give you warnin'." 

"Instead of answering of me, Jeannine bursts out a-cryin', and wrings her hands, and goes on awful, until I'm dashed if I can make out what she's up to. 

"But little by little I got it out of her, for I wouldn't stand no nonsense; find she told me how she'd been sittin' at work at the window of her little room, which was at the top of the house, right up in one of the gables, and overlooked the lime-walk, and the shrubbery and the well, when she see my lady walking with a strange gentleman, and they walked together for a long time, until by-and-by they—" 

"Stop!" cried Sherlock, "I know the rest." 

"Well, Jeannine told me all about what she see, and she told me she'd met her lady almost directly afterward, and something had passed between 'em, not much, but enough to let her missus know that the servant what she looked down upon had found out that as would put her in that servant's power to the last day of her life. 

"'She'll do anything in the world for us if we keep her secret,' Jeannine says to me. 

"So you see both my Lady Stamford and her maid thought as the gentleman as I'd seen safe off by the London train was lying dead at the bottom of the well. If I was to give the letter they'd find out the contrary of this; and if I was to give the letter, Jeannine and me would lose the chance of getting started in life by her missus. 

"So I kep' the letter and kep' my secret, and my lady kep' hers. But I thought if she acted liberal by me, and gave me the money I wanted, free like, I'd tell her everything, and make her mind easy. 

"But she didn't. Whatever she give me she throwed me as if I'd been a dog. Whenever she spoke to me, she spoke as she might have spoken to a dog; and a dog she couldn't abide the sight of. There was no word in her mouth that was too bad for me; there was no toss as she could give her head that was too proud and scornful for me; and my blood boiled against her, and I kep' my secret, and let her keep hers. I opened the two letters, and I read 'em, but I couldn't make much sense out of 'em, and I hid 'em away; and not a creature but me has seen 'em until this night." 

Charlie Milverton had finished his story, and lay quietly enough, exhausted by having talked so long. He watched Sherlock Holmes's face, fully expecting some reproof, some grave lecture; for he had a vague consciousness that he had done wrong. 

But Sherlock did not lecture him; he had no fancy for an office which he did not think himself fitted to perform. 

Sherlock Holmes sat until long after daybreak with the injured man, who fell into a heavy slumber a short time after he had finished his story. The old woman had dozed comfortably throughout her son's confession. Jeannine was asleep upon the press bedstead in the room below; so the young barrister was the only watcher. 

He could not sleep; he could only sit in a kind of astonished daze and think of the story he had heard. He could only thank Providence for his friend's preservation. 

Jeannine came up-stairs at eight o'clock, ready to take her place at the sick-bed, and Sherlock Holmes went away, to get a bed at the Sun Inn. It was nearly dusk when he awoke out of a long dreamless slumber, and dressed himself before dining in the little sitting-room, in which he and John had sat together a few months before. 

The landlord waited upon him at dinner, and told him that Charlie Milverton had died at five o'clock that afternoon. "He went off rather sudden like," the man said, "but very quiet." 

Sherlock Holmes wrote a letter that evening, addressed to Madame Taylor, care of Monsieur Val, Villebrumeuse; a long letter in which he told the wretched woman who had borne so many names, and was to bear a false one for the rest of her life, the story that the dying man had told him. 

"It may be some comfort to her to hear that her husband did not perish in his youth by her wicked hand," he thought, "if her soul can hold any sentiment of pity or sorrow for others." 

* * * * *

Since hearing the news of John Watson’s fate, a great roaring seemed to have filled Sherlock Holmes’s head; his mind reeled, and his very being vibrated with his earnest wish to go immediately to seek him out, in whatever corner of the world he had hidden himself. Every second he was obliged to spend on other tasks felt like days, and an agony of anticipation had replaced the agony of his grief. 

Too, he was eager to see Harriet Watson again; he longed to share his extraordinary discovery with a kind heart who would rejoice along with him. He supposed, however, that he must look in on Molly Stamford, at least briefly, before turning to business of his own. If he had grown more somber in the past months, and more inclined to melancholy, he had also grown responsible, and learned to look beyond his own desires. In short, tragedy had tempered his great mind with goodness. 

Sherlock Holmes set out at dusk for the pleasant walk to Stamford Court. He was shown into the drawing room, where a cheerful fire and a bottle of fine brandy made him feel welcome and at home – far more welcome, in fact, than he had felt in the years of my lady’s tenure at the Court. Molly was doing a fine job at restoring Stamford Court to its former grace, Holmes reflected. The difference in atmosphere was already marked; Sir Michael would have reason to be pleased with his daughter when he returned. 

“Now where could Molly have got to?” Sherlock muttered to himself. In his state of agitated anticipation, he found it impossible to graciously tolerate even the smallest of delays. 

Gradually, he became aware of a curious sort of low, rustling noise coming from the direction of the corridor. “What on earth could be the cause of such a sound?” he wondered to himself idly. But then, with a great shock, Sherlock recognized Molly’s low sigh, and realized what the suggestive sound must mean. In an instant, he was on his feet. With a suddenly-pounding heart, he raced across the room; he rounded the corner and was upon them: Sir Gregory Lestrade had Molly clasped about the waist, and pushed up tight against the wall. Sherlock could not see her face, which was tilted up to meet Sir Gregory’s – by force, he thought, for Molly was so slight, and Sir Gregory so powerful a man. 

Sherlock let loose a snarl of rage. Grasping Lestrade’s shoulder, he tore him away and landed a solid right fist to Sir Gregory’s jaw before that man could even comprehend what was happening.

Sir Gregory fell backwards against the opposite wall with a pained grunt, but Sherlock had already turned away, and was speaking softly and comfortingly to Molly. “What has he done to you, my poor Molly?” he murmured. He took Molly’s arm and attempted to draw her back into the sitting room with him, to remove her quickly from Lestrade’s presence. 

Indignantly, though, she drew away from him. “What have YOU done, Sherlock Holmes?” she cried, and to his astonishment, drew back her hand and slapped him, hard, across the cheek. 

Sherlock watched in amazement as Molly rushed to Sir Gregory’s side, placing a hand gently on his reddened jaw and assisting him to stand upright again. 

Sherlock looked on, blinking and dumbfounded, as Molly helped Sir Gregory into the sitting room, and sat him in a chair by the fire. She poured him out a brandy, and watched while he sipped it gingerly, speaking lowly and soothingly to him the whole time. 

At last, she turned back to Sherlock. “You fool!” she hissed at him, her pretty cheeks pink with emotion. “You see, but you do not observe – I was a willing participant in that embrace. I was willing, Sherlock! Sir Gregory and I are affianced.” 

“My dear Molly!” Sherlock stammered. “I really must… I must congratulate you. I am quite overcome. I… When was this decided, then? Was there truly no coercion?” he asked, wonderingly. “This is, indeed, what you want?” The past twenty-four hours had been like a dream to him, and this was just the latest unexpected event in a string of astonishments. He began to wonder if he was sleeping, perhaps under the influence of a particularly potent distillation of opium.

Molly smiled, then. “We have been corresponding, Sherlock, and Sir Gregory has been unswerving in his loyalty and concern. When he heard that papa was away – he had not yet heard the unbearable details of our troubles – he came at once to offer his assistance. He has been most kind, most gentlemanly.”

Sherlock blinked again, collecting his scattered thoughts. “Then I am happy for you, my dear.” He spoke correctly, but there was no warmth or genuine happiness in his voice, for he could not quite yet believe that Molly’s prior scorn could turn to love so quickly.

But Molly was looking earnestly into his eyes, and saw the tenor of his thoughts. She smiled, a little sadly, and took his arm, drawing him out of earshot of Sir Gregory, who sat, apparently still quite stunned from the blow Sherlock had dealt him, before the fire. 

“You told me once, Sherlock, that finding a heart’s match is a great uncertainty. I have reflected upon your words, and I know them to be true. A heart’s match is a rare and precious thing. But a good friend, a solid man who loves truly and is a partner to one in the adventures of life – that is a precious thing too; and more than enough to make most women happy. It is enough to make me happy, certainly.”

Sherlock took her little hand between his own, and looked at her searchingly. Finally, he nodded. “There are many paths in life, my dear, and you have chosen with prudence. Women have few choices, I have come to realize; your lives are governed too often by forces and men outside your control. I do not think you will have that problem with Lestrade. May this choice grant you power to ensure your own happiness.” 

Molly squeezed his hand, and the water stood in her eyes. She rose on her tip-toes, and gently kissed his cheek. “I did not think to find you so understanding. Thank you, my dear. I wish happiness for you, as well, whatever path you choose.”

And then, they both started, for Lestrade had come up beside them, recovered enough to stand and speak under his own power again. He looked at the two, with their hands joined, and their faces soft, and he only smiled. 

“Mr. Holmes, I never thought to see you so concerned with the welfare of another,” he said kindly. “I have been wrong about you; I see that now, and I am not too proud to admit it.” He shook Sherlock’s hand firmly, and looked him square in the eye. “We shall be friends, we three. You are most welcome at our estate. I don’t stand on ceremony: our home is yours.”

Sherlock, quite unusually, was visibly touched. “I, too, have judged you unfairly – an unforgivable offence for a man of my profession. You are kindness itself, to speak to me thus with a bruise of my own making blooming upon your jaw; for which, by the by, I apologize most profusely.”

“It is forgotten. Let us say no more about it, for actions taken for the protection of this worthy woman could never cause offence. I was in the wrong, I know, to embrace her as I did.” 

“Molly is a good woman,” Sherlock replied, “and as she was willing, no more need be said about the matter. I daresay you will be very content with each other.”

Through all of this, Molly had stood slightly apart, silently regarding the two men. At last, she rolled her eyes and smiled. “I’m so very gratified to hear that my honour is intact and my future assured.” Her warm smile softened her words. 

She took Sir Gregory’s arm and led him to the door. 

“Goodbye, Sherlock, for now. We have several business matters to attend to, and a letter to write to father that really cannot wait, for the sake of my future husband’s pretty face, if not my honour.” She smirked, and as the happy pair walked off, threw a wink over her shoulder. 

As soon as they were out of the room, Sherlock collapsed into an over-stuffed armchair. 

“Upon my soul,” he said with amazement. “Did I dream it? Who would have thought my Molly and Sir Gregory would ever come together in such a harmonious way? Indeed, I never expected her to accept any suitor, so particular is she. 

“Still,” he reflected, “stupid as the man is, he does seem an exceptionally decent sort. Lord knows, she has brains enough for the both of them, and certainly will be more than competent to handle their affairs.” 

Sherlock sat in silent contemplation, thinking many warm thoughts of the future happiness of the ambitious and brilliant Molly. With the money and power and friendship of a man like Lestrade behind her, he felt sure that she would go far in the world. These thoughts were a blessed reprieve after the horrors of the week that had gone before. 

But as the late winter day slowly faded into darkness, his mind, as if in sympathy, turned to darker channels. “It’s a great blessing to find a heart’s-match,” he had told Molly all those months ago, “an uncertainty, but a great blessing to be sure. You mustn’t throw that chance away.” How those words had haunted him in the past months; their truth did not lessen their sting, but rather drove it deeper, the effect of time working it painfully, piercingly, into the bone. 

He had met his heart-match; he knew it, faintly, from the time of his first meeting John Watson at school, but felt it with keen acuity when they had met again in London, even if he had not recognized his love for what it was until it was far too late. But fate and kind providence had granted him another chance. He swore fiercely that night, before God and upon his very life, that he would not waste this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Sunday Summer Serial: thanks to redscudery for the brilliant idea!
> 
> Thursday Teasers posted on my Tumblr (http://doctornerdington.tumblr.com).
> 
> Comments greatly appreciated.
> 
> Next week, FINAL CHAPTER (unless, ahem ahem ahem, there's call for a porny epilogue): "Restored."


	15. Restored

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a posthumous collaboration with Mary Elizabeth Braddon; I've adapted her novel Lady Audley's Secret, and retained much of her original structure and language. ALL CREDIT TO HER.
> 
> Chapter rating: explicit. Wooooooo!

After a hurried and joyful conference with Mr. Sherlock Holmes in Essex, Harriet Watson returned to Dorsetshire to tell her father the extraordinary news that it was probable that his only son yet lived, that he may have returned to India, and that it was very possible he would one day return to claim the forgiveness of the father he had never particularly injured. 

Mr. William Watson was fairly nonplused. Junius Brutus had never been placed in such a position as this, and seeing no way of getting out of this dilemma by acting after his favorite model, Mr. Watson was fain to be natural for once in his life, and to confess that he had suffered much uneasiness and pain of mind about his only son since his conversation with Sherlock Holmes, and that he would be heartily glad to take his poor boy to his arms, whenever he should return to England. But when was he likely to return? And how was he to be communicated with? That was the question. Sherlock Holmes remembered the advertisements which he had caused to be inserted in the Indian papers. If John had re-entered that country alive, how was it that no notice had ever been taken of those advertisements? Was it likely that his friend would be indifferent to his uneasiness? But then, again, it was just possible that John Watson had not happened to see the newspapers; and, as he had surely traveled under a feigned name, neither his fellow passengers nor the captain of the vessel would have been able to identify him with the person advertised for. And maybe he was not in India at all, but in some other far-flung corner of the world! What was to be done? Must they wait patiently till John grew weary of his exile, and returned to his friends who loved him? Or were there any means to be taken by which his return might be hastened? It was this, and only this, that occupied the considerable weight of Holmes’ mind. 

In this state of mind, Sherlock Holmes went down to Dorsetshire to pay a visit to Mr. Watson, who had given way to a perfect torrent of generous impulses, and had gone so far as to invite his son's friend to share the prim hospitality of the square, red brick cottage. 

Mr. Watson had only two sentiments upon the subject of John's story; one was a natural relief and happiness in the thought that his son had been saved, the other was an earnest wish that my lady had been his wife, and that he might thus have had the pleasure of making a signal example of her. 

"It is not for me to blame you, Mr. Holmes," he said, "for having smuggled this guilty woman out of the reach of justice, and thus, as I may say, paltered with the laws of your country. I can only remark that, had the lady fallen into my hands, she would have been very differently treated." Holmes had no doubts as to the sincerity of this claim.

It was in the middle of April when Sherlock Holmes found himself once more under those black fir-trees beneath which he had had his first meeting with Harriet Watson. There were primroses and early violets in the hedges now, and the streams, which, upon his first visit, had been hard and frost-bound as the heart of William Watson, had thawed, like that gentleman, and ran merrily under the blackthorn bushes in the capricious April sunshine. 

Sherlock had a prim bedroom, and an uncompromising dressing-room allotted him in the square house, and he woke every morning upon a metallic spring mattress, which always gave him the idea of sleeping upon some musical instrument, to see the sun glaring in upon him through the square, white blinds and lighting up the two lackered urns which adorned the foot of the blue iron bedstead, until they blazed like two tiny brazen lamps of the Roman period. He emulated Mr. William Watson in the matter of shower-baths and cold water, and emerged prim and blue as that gentleman himself, as the clock in the hall struck seven, to join the master of the house in his ante-breakfast constitutional under the fir-trees in the stiff plantation. 

But there was generally a third person who assisted in the constitutional promenades, and that third person was Harriet Watson, who used to walk by her father's side, more beautiful than the morning—for that was sometimes dull and cloudy, while she was always fresh and bright. 

At first she and her brother’s friend were very ceremonious toward each other, and were only friendly upon the one subject of John's adventures; but little by little a pleasant intimacy arose between them, and before the first week of Sherlock's visit had elapsed, Miss Watson made him happy, by taking him seriously in hand and lecturing him on the purposeless life he had led so long, and the little use he had made of the talents and opportunities that had been given to him. He felt rather as if he were being rebuked by an elder sister, and warmed considerably under the unusually familial affection with which Harriet and her father had begun to treat him. 

But all through the two weeks that he stayed with the Watsons at Grange Heath, Sherlock’s mind was ever ranging afield; always thinking of the lost John Watson, and devising schemes of locating the missing man. 

At last, the agony of inaction grew too great for him to bear, and he felt that he must begin the search for John in earnest, or he should grow truly mad. He packed his portmanteau one late April morning, and announced his departure. He was fearful of raising Mr. Watson’s hopes too extravagantly, for although he had every expectation of succeeding in his quest to locate his friend, he knew that the search could take many years; and so, he said nothing about the reason for his departure, except that he had business matters to which he must attend in London. 

Mr. Watson was not the sort of man to utter any passionate lamentations at the prospect of losing his guest, but he expressed himself with a cool cordiality which served with him as the strongest demonstration of friendship. 

"We have got on very well together, Mr. Holmes," he said, "and you have been pleased to appear sufficiently happy in the quiet routine of our frugal household; nay, more, you have conformed to our little domestic regulations in a manner which I cannot refrain from saying I take as an especial compliment to myself." 

Sherlock bowed. How thankful he was to the good fortune which had seen him leave his small case of opium and cocaine in London, for had he succumbed to their attractions, he would surely have overslept the signal of the clanging bell, or ignored the ken of clocks at Mr. Watson' luncheon hour. 

"I trust as we have got on so remarkably well together," Mr. Watson resumed, "you will do me the honor of repeating your visit to Dorsetshire whenever you feel inclined. You will find plenty of sport around these parts, and you will meet with every politeness and attention from my neighbours and acquaintances, if you like to bring your gun with you." 

Sherlock responded most heartily to these friendly overtures. He declared that there was no earthly occupation that was more agreeable to him than partridge-shooting, and that he should be only too delighted to avail himself of the privilege so kindly offered to him. Privately, he had the highest hopes that his next visit to the Heath would be with John Watson at his side, and maintaining the good will of this truculent man was of the utmost importance to him, regardless of the effort it required. 

And then, Sherlock went to take his leave from Harriet. They talked of the one subject which was always a bond of union between them; they talked of her lost brother John. She spoke of him in a very melancholy tone this last morning of Sherlock’s visit. How could she be otherwise than sad, remembering that if he lived—and she was not even sure of that—he was a lonely wanderer far away from all who loved him, and carrying the memory of a blighted life wherever he went. 

"I cannot think how papa can be so resigned to my poor brother's continued absence," she said, "for he does love him, Mr. Holmes; even you must have seen lately that he does love him. But I cannot think how he can so quietly submit to his absence. If I were a man, I would travel the world, and find him, and bring him back; if he was still to be found among the living," she added, in a lower voice. 

She turned her face away from Sherlock, and looked out at the cloud-blackened sky. He laid his hand upon her arm. It trembled in spite of him, and his voice trembled, too, as he spoke to her. 

"I take my leave only for the purpose of searching out your brother, wherever he may be in the world," he confessed. 

"You!" She turned her head, and looked at him earnestly through her tears. "You, Mr. Holmes! Do you think that I could ask you to make such a sacrifice for us?" 

"And do you imagine, Harriet, that I should think any sacrifice too great if it were made for -- well, for love?” He coloured slightly, for this was the first time he had used that word aloud to describe his feelings for John. “Do you think there is any voyage I would refuse to take, if I knew that I should find him at the end of it? I will go from one end of the world to the other to look for your brother, and will never return alive unless I bring him with me. I will take my chance of what reward he shall give me for my labor. If I can but see his face once more in my lifetime, it will be enough." 

Her head was bent, and it was some moments before she answered him. 

"You are very good, Mr. Holmes," she said, at last, "and I see that your feelings for my brother are as real and profound as I could ever wish for him from a lover. I had wondered, before, whether – . But it does not matter. Bring my brother home, sir. Bring him home, and let him see the family and friend who love and miss him." 

So Sherlock Holmes went back up to London, intending to surrender his chambers in Figtree Court, equip himself for a lengthy expedition, and to make all due inquiries about such ships as sailed to the port of Calcutta in the month of May. 

He had lingered until after luncheon at Grange Heath, and it was in the dusky twilight that he entered the shady Temple courts and found his way to his chambers. He found Mrs. Hudson scrubbing the stairs, as was her wont upon a Saturday evening, and he had to make his way upward amidst an atmosphere of soapy steam, that made the balusters greasy under his touch. 

"There's lots of letters, Mr. Holmes," the housekeeper said, as she rose from her knees and flattened herself against the wall to enable Sherlock to pass her, "and there's some parcels, and there's a gentleman which has called ever so many times, and is waiting to-night, for I told him you'd written to me to say your rooms were to be aired." 

He opened the door of his sitting-room, and walked in. The bees were buzzing in the sitting-room window, and the faint, yellow light was flickering upon the geranium leaves. The visitor, whoever he was, sat with his back to the window and his head bent upon his breast, but he started up as Sherlock Holmes entered the room. Sherlock uttered a great cry of joy and surprise, and opened his arms to his lost friend, John Watson. 

* * * * *

Minutes or hours later – Sherlock could never say with any certainty how much time had passed – the gray mist swirling before his eyes began to clear, and he came to himself again to find his collar-ends undone and the tingling after-taste of brandy upon his lips. He had fainted, for the first and last time in his life. John was bending over his chair, glass in his hand. “My dear friend,” said the well-remembered voice, “I owe you a thousand apologies. I had no idea that you would be so affected.” 

Sherlock could only gape at him in stupefied wonder; John appeared to be real, he thought, as if through a great fog; he did not seem to be a hallucination – but how could this be? John was leaning back into his own chair, now, looking quite relieved at seeing Sherlock conscious again. But Sherlock had seen John’s image spring fully-formed from his own mind rather too often in the previous months to trust his eyes now. 

“Please,” Sherlock found himself whispering quickly, “please, John,” and the name was a prayer on his tongue. “Indulge a strange fancy. I find that I cannot quite believe that it is John Watson sitting before me, and not some shade of my own fevered hopes. You are… Forgive me, but you are quite real?” 

John smiled tenderly at his friend. “How could I,” he asked, moving closer, “how could I deny you anything? You, my dearest friend, my defender, the one soul on this earth who worked ever in my interests?” By now, he was kneeling close to Holmes, close enough that Holmes could smell the deep and earthy scent of him. 

Watson took Holmes’ hand between his own, placed it firmly over his heart. 

“There. Do you feel? Solid and true, in the flesh. My very heart beats beneath your hand.”

Holmes clutched wildly at Watson’s chest, and then with a cry of savage frustration, tore his hands away, rent open the shirt, and pressed his ear closely to the other man’s breast. Watson’s hands landed in his hair, and crushed him more firmly against him. 

“There,” Holmes said at last. “I hear it. I hear it! And I must believe the evidence of my own senses, else the past few months have truly left me mad. Oh John! John. I had despaired that I should ever see you again.” 

Suddenly overcome, a sound like a sob escaped his lips, and he fell to his knees beside John, wrapping his long arms around him in a fierce embrace. John made no reply, but grasped his friend just as tightly. They stayed in this position for long minutes, without speaking, and it was a silent communing. 

It was not enough for Sherlock, though; it was not nearly enough, after all the months of terror and anxiety and anticipation. Now that John was in his arms, his very flesh cried out that this man was his own, and must be so claimed. 

With a growl, Sherlock succumbed, spectacularly, to his animal impulse; he tore the shirt from John’s body, not caring for the popped buttons or torn fabric that must result. His own shirt was disposed of similarly, with scant seconds’ delay; he pressed his mouth into John’s in a searing, bruising kiss. John grunted with surprise, and fell back onto the floor, but Sherlock was on top of him in an instant, plundering his mouth and covering his body with his own.

John pressed up against him with equal force, and it was not in resistance, but in greedy acquiescence; he opened his own mouth to Sherlock’s invasion, and met it eagerly. 

The men grappled on the floor, Sherlock ceding dominance for a time, and then John, but their match was perfect, and neither could gain the advantage; now John grasped Sherlock about the waist, locking him in a tight embrace; now Sherlock reached down to cup John’s taut arse, and ingratiate himself more fully into the arc of his perfect body. Their breathing was ragged, but they spoke not a word as they gradually discovered a mutually-satisfying pattern between them. Sherlock yanked open their trousers with uncaring brutality, their straining cocks speaking to what they could not, as yet, give voice. 

Theirs was a violent joining, a meeting of passionate souls that resembled nothing so much as a death match. Sherlock thrust unrelentingly against John’s steely core, driving them unknowingly across the sitting-room floor; John’s fingers bruised his hips as they urged him on to a faster, harder rhythm, while Sherlock sucked purple into the delicate skin of John’s throat; they were desperate, uncaring of anything but the claiming of the other. 

John reached, finally, between their frantic bodies, and took hold of their cocks in his left hand, frigging them harshly together and groaning with the beautiful friction. Sherlock’s thrusts increased in force until, with a full-throated cry of pleasure, almost of pain, he spent himself at the very moment John shuddered and cried out, pulsing his milky-while pleasure up over their stomachs and chests.

* * * * *

And so, the first storm of their passion passed. In its wake, Sherlock felt raw and uncertain. The men lay tumbled together on the sitting-room floor, half naked and still panting. “I am not…” his voice was hoarse, and trailed off. He pressed his mouth once more against John’s hair. “That was not what I –”

“Hush,” John breathed, his eyes shut. “Hush now.”

Sherlock lay against John, and though he strove mightily to banish every thought and question and doubt, now that his body was quietened, he could not still his swirling mind.

At length, and almost against his wishes, he spoke, and the spell that had enraptured the men was broken. “Where were you, John?” he asked softly, trailing his fingers tenderly over the other man’s bare, golden flesh; he could not bear to break their connexion.

And then John Watson spoke very briefly of that sunny day in September, upon which he had left his friend sleeping by the trout stream while he went to accuse his false wife of that conspiracy which had well nigh broken his heart. 

"God knows that from the moment in which I sunk into the black pit, knowing the treacherous hand that had sent me to what might have been my death, my chief thought was of the safety of the woman who had betrayed me. I cannot hate her, Sherlock! For all the evil she has done, I cannot hate the woman, for I failed her as a husband and as a friend; I did not deserve her violence, and yet, I do not condemn her for it – for what might I have done in her place?”

We know what Sherlock had to say to this. He touched lightly and tenderly upon that subject which he knew was cruelly painful to his friend; he said very little, but enough to satisfy John’s curiosity about the fate of the wretched woman who was wearing out the remnant of her life in the quiet suburb of a foreign city. 

“I am relieved,” John sighed, taking up Sherlock’s hand. “She is well and safe, and I need not think of her again.” He turned then, again, to that fateful day upon which he had almost left this world for the next. 

“I was entirely surprised by her,” he explained. “I fell upon my feet in a mass of slush and mire, but my shoulder was bruised, and my arm broken against the side of the well. I was stunned and dazed for a few minutes, but I roused myself by an effort, for I felt that the atmosphere I breathed was deadly. I had my Indian experiences to help me in my peril; I could climb like a cat. The stones of which the well was built were rugged and irregular, and I was able to work my way upward by planting my feet in the interstices of the stones, and resting my back at times against the opposite side of the well, helping myself as well as I could with my hands, though one arm was crippled. It was hard work, Sherlock, and it seems strange that a man who had long professed himself weary of his life, should take so much trouble to preserve it. I think I must have been working upward of half an hour before I got to the top; I know the time seemed an eternity of pain and peril. It was impossible for me to leave the place until after dark without being observed, so I hid myself behind a clump of laurel-bushes, and lay down on the grass faint and exhausted to wait for nightfall. The man who found me there told you the rest." 

"Yes, my dear John.—yes, he told me all." 

John had never returned to India after all. He had gone on board a ship bound for Calcutta, but had afterward changed his berth for one in another vessel belonging to the same owners, and had gone to New York, where he had stayed as long as he could endure the loneliness of an existence which separated him from every friend he had ever known. 

"I had enough money to enable me to get on pretty well in my own quiet way,” he continued, “and I meant to have started for the California gold fields to get more when that was gone. I might have done it, too, but I carried the old bullet in my breast; and what sympathy could I have with men who knew nothing of me? I yearned for the strong grasp of your hand, Sherlock; the friendly touch of the hand which had guided me through the darkest passage of my life." 

And then there was silence for a time, and Sherlock drew John tight against his side. He considered his answer for such a long time that John began to fear he had misspoke. 

"I am not your friend – or, not only that," Sherlock said finally, “and my touch has never been that of an affectionate but disinterested companion. I love you, John. I love you. You may run out of my rooms this moment, if you like; you may disappear into the world or return to your father’s house and never see me again. But I shall go on loving you all the same; and I shall love you forever, whether you will or no." He could not help glancing nervously toward John’s face as he said this. The perfect lids drooped a little over the beautiful eyes, and the faintest shadow of a blush illuminated John’s cheek in the dying light. 

“I told your sister,” he continued, “that it would be enough for me to simply look on your face again, and know that you are well. It’s not enough, John. It’s not enough. It will never be enough.” 

John pulled away from him and sat up, but not with a sudden or angry gesture. He placed a hand, tremulously, upon Sherlock’s dark hair. 

"Sherlock, Sherlock" he murmured, in a low, pleading voice, "I did not know. I did not know! I never thought – never dared to hope – that you could care for me this way. Can you doubt that I feel the same? I have loved you for so long… so long. You are the best man I have ever known, and the night at Stamford Court, when you kissed me – it made me very happy. I damn the timing, for I was out of my head with confusion that night, but by God, you made me happy. Many nights, the memory of your touch is the only thing that kept me from throwing myself over the side of my ship. Can it be true? Can you – will you love me?" 

Words were not needed for Sherlock’s answer. In the delicious silence that followed, every gesture was a tacit avowal; every touch a tender confession. 

They did not sleep that night, but passed the hours in gentle caresses, in murmured words of love and comfort that, for all their soft tenderness, were as sincerely felt as their earlier brutal joining had been. Again and again, they strove to learn each other’s bodies, hearts, and souls, and in the learning, their union was made irrevocable. 

As the sun rose, they stood side by side at one of the long windows of the sitting-room, watching the shadows depart the sky and the rosy light growing every moment rosier as the sun appeared. For that moment, at least, they could be forgetful of the past, and reckless of the future. 

* * * * *

Two years have passed since the late-April twilight in which Sherlock found his old friend; and their happiness cannot be said, in any way, to have diminished. 

They gave up the bachelor quarters at Figtree Court, and took a suite of rooms in Baker Street; these rooms were extensive enough to forestall any ugly speculation about the nature of their relations by a nosy and prurient public, and included a handsome sitting-room which Holmes took to using as a consulting room for private clients. 

Mr. Holmes quickly became a rising man upon the home circuit, and distinguished himself in the great breach of promise case of Hobbs v. Nobbs, quite convulsing the court by his deliciously comic rendering of the faithless Mr. Nobb's amatory correspondence. 

He found he cared less for the law than he did for the strange puzzles and felonious absurdities that were so abundant in bustling London, however, and as his reputation grew, so too did his private clientele. John worked, for a time, as a surgeon’s assistant in Harley Street, but soon found Sherlock’s cases to be so fascinating – and indeed, Sherlock’s demands for his assistance so pressing – that he quickly abandoned this employment and became Sherlock’s partner in all things, much to the other’s joy. 

It is more than a year since a black-edged letter, written upon foreign paper, came to Sherlock Holmes, to announce the death of a certain Madame Taylor, who had expired peacefully at Villebrumeuse, dying after a long illness, which Monsieur Val described as a maladie de langueur. He slipped it into his pocket, and gently shared the news with John much later that night, while the city slept, and they were alone in the quiet of their private bedchamber. John took the news better than Sherlock had feared he might; a resigned shrug and a sad sigh had been all his response. But he held tight to Sherlock all through that night, and neither man slept for thinking of the tragic path of that young life, one with bitterness and chagrin, the other with gnawing guilt and infinite sadness. 

There are many visitors to Baker Street now, and only some of them are clients. A young couple arrives several times each year with arms full of gifts from their country estate: honey, and sausages, and a variety of obscure and uncatalogued plant life procured from local meadows by Lady Lestrade expressly for Mr. Holmes’ enjoyment. Lately, too, they have brought with them a bonny child; all are merry when Lord and Lady Lestrade are in residence, for peals of the child’s delighted laughter ring through the building, and draw Mrs. Hudson up from her street-level quarters. (The good woman had been induced to accompany our gentlemen to Baker Street with promises of light work and obedience – only one of which promises was kept.) If John’s eyes sometimes take on a far-away look, his thoughts turning to his own lost babe, Sherlock is sure to draw him aside for a comforting word, or Molly or Gregory will clap him on the back, and drop the child into his lap; none can be sorrowful in her puckish presence.

Another visitor comes to town for several weeks each year, and stays at Baker Street when she must – although she prefers to pass her time out amongst the bright lights of London’s more reputable dance halls and gin palaces. Harriet Watson has discovered the world beyond her father’s house, and she finds she likes it very well. Far from the timid and retiring girl she had been in Dorsetshire, living firmly under her father’s thumb, she has astonished herself and her brothers (we may say “brothers,” for she has claimed Sherlock as her own) with her lively interest in society, both high and low. Sherlock and John, considering her their equal – nay, their superior in many things – afford her the freedom to come and go as she pleases, and to follow her own inclinations with regard to entertainments and companions. They write regularly to her father, sending approving and entirely duplicitous reports of her modest existence in London.

Stamford Court is shut up, Jeannine Milverton, the widow housekeeper, at last reigns paramount in the mansion which my lady's ringing laughter once made musical. A curtain hangs before the pre-Raphaelite portrait; and the blue mold which artists dread gathers upon the Wouvermans and Poussins, the Cuyps and Tintorettis. The house is often shown to inquisitive visitors, though the baronet is not informed of that fact, and people admire my lady's rooms, and ask many questions about the pretty, fair-haired woman who died abroad. 

Sir Michael has no fancy to return to the familiar dwelling-place in which he once dreamed a brief dream of impossible happiness. He has moved to a house he has lately bought in Hertfordshire, on the borders of his son-in-law's estate. He is a frequent visitor to Lord and Lady Lestrade, and a doting grandfather.

John Watson has recovered from the great sorrow of his life as well as one might expect. He is a young man yet, and resilient. The dark story of his past fades little by little every day, and there may come a time in which the shadow that my lady's mischief has cast upon the young man's life will utterly vanish away. This, at least, is Sherlock’s fondest wish and dearest hope, and he strives every day to do what he can to obliterate the darkness that sometimes lingers in his beloved’s eyes. 

I hope no one will take objection to my story because the end of it leaves the good people all content and at peace. It is, perhaps, no usual thing, but life is occasionally as felicitous as those fairy stories which end with the improbable phrase, “happily ever after.” Such is certainly the case for Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, for if each of us is a question, a mystery, and a story, then Sherlock and John are forever each other’s answer, solution, and ending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've reached the end, my lovelies! Thank you for reading. I've learned so much in the course of this project, and had huge amounts of fun. 
> 
> There may be a "Five Years Later..." porny epilogue in the works. And I'm very seriously considering a sequel, of sorts, in which Maria did not die, but escaped to Paris to have adventures of her own. 
> 
> As always, comments welcomed and appreciated. And come find me on Tumblr (I'm doctornerdington there, too).


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